Memorandum submitted by the Audit Commission
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. The Audit Commission welcomes the Home
Affairs Committee's focus on police funding and is pleased to
submit evidence.
2. This submission explains the work undertaken
by auditors appointed by the Commission to assess Police Use of
Resources (PURE), which forms part of the statutory audit of police
authorities. For the first time in 2005-06, PURE has been assessed
at all police authorities in England by the Commission and in
Wales by the Wales Audit Office.
3. When undertaking a PURE judgement, auditors
consider five themes:
4. In March 2007, the Commission issued
a national report entitled Police use of resources 2005-06,
which provides the basis for this submission.
INTRODUCTION
5. More than £11 billion of central
government funding was allocated to policing in 2006-07. This
was an increase of £4.2 billion, or 65%, in cash terms over
the last eight years. The increase in funding places an onus on
police authorities and forces to assess the effectiveness of their
use of resources and to consider whether the investment represents
value for money for local people.
6. The police must work effectively with
their local partners, for example through local area agreements,
to share local intelligence and make joint decisions that shape
communities and improve local services and quality of life. However,
the Commission's report Neighbourhood crime and anti-social behaviour,
published in May 2006, found that many community safety partnerships
could not assess whether their activities represented good value
for money. We identified the need for improvements in performance
management and data capturing systems to enable police authorities,
forces and local partners to understand local issues better and
to manage and deploy their resources effectively.
PURE ASSESSMENT RESULTS
7. Our overall assessment of PURE scores
across England and Wales indicates that the majority of police
authorities and forces are using their resources effectively.
It finds that:
— 65% of police authorities are
performing well (Level 3);
— 33% are performing adequately
(Level 2); and
— one police authority has demonstrated
inadequate performance (Level 1).
— no police authority is demonstrating
strong performance (Level 4).
8. The recent PURE exercise found that police
authorities have robust financial management arrangements and
are generally well placed to meet national and local priorities,
while at the same time responding to the unplanned events faced
by police services.
9. However, the ability of police authorities
and forces to assess and improve value for money at a local and
neighbourhood level remains underdeveloped. Our PURE judgement
identified some key improvement areas for police authorities and
forces to demonstrate that local people receive good value for
money policing and significant community benefits. The key improvement
areas are to:
— make better use of activity
data, such as information on police officer time, to assess how
resources are being applied to activities within local areas;
— work with partners to improve
data and financial performance management systems; to understand
value for money at a local level; and to direct resources to priority
areas in the best way;
— use benchmarking and performance
data to review resource use and determine the best method for
provision of services; and
— develop mechanisms to assess
any savings to be made and to ensure value for money from partnerships
and collaborative working.
10. We also recommended that police authorities
should:
— improve their arrangements for
managing the internal control environment, so that they could
better support financial planning and assess value for money;
— develop specific risk management
policies that align with service and financial planning; and
— strengthen the leadership skills
of members to provide effective scrutiny and accountability to
the police force on financial management and reporting matters.
FUTURE CHALLENGES
11. Police authorities and forces face a
range of significant challenges. These include greater emphasis
on collaborative and partnership working, modernisation of the
workforce and a changing pattern of funding with no growth budgets
anticipated for the next three years. Police authorities and forces
will need to balance tackling national threats, such as serious
and organised crime and counter-terrorism, with delivering high
quality neighbourhood policing to all local areas.
12. If all of this is to be achieved, police
authorities and forces will need to develop more innovative approaches
to measuring and assessing value for money and identifying the
best placed provider of services.
13. In accordance with our statutory remit,
the Commission's appointed auditors will continue to assess how
police authorities and forces are responding to the funding and
modernisation challenges facing the service.
14. The PURE assessment contributes to continuous
improvement in the use of resources by police authorities and
forces. We intend to develop PURE further in anticipation of the
new performance frameworks being developed for local government
and in policing—namely the Comprehensive Area Assessments
(CAA) set out in the Local Government White Paper, Strong and
Prosperous Communities, and the Home Office's proposals for
future Assessments of Policing and Community Safety (APACS).
15. Building safer and stronger communities
requires effective collaborative working between the police and
their local authority partners. The development of aligned performance
frameworks across these key public sector areas presents the opportunity
to pull together some of the currently disconnected strands of
activity designed to improve police performance and use of resources
elsewhere. Proper alignment of the frameworks should then support
the delivery of more effective, value for money policing and community
safety services to local people.
8 May 2007
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