Memorandum submitted by the Home Office
SR07 PUBLIC SERVICE AAGREEMENT TARGETS
I understand the Committee have, in the past,
expressed an interest in being consulted on the Public Service
Agreements (PSAs) for the next spending review.
Please find attached a brief paper outlining
the direction of travel we are considering.
INTRODUCTION
1. This note outlines the changes to the
PSA framework across government that we may see in CSR07. It then
describes the direction of travel the Home Office is considering
for the Committee's comments.
2. The PSAs, performance indicators and
targets are under development and have not yet been finalised.
OUTLINE OF
THE CHANGES
TO THE
PSA FRAMEWORK IN
CSR07
3. We anticipate that across government
there will be a significantly reduced number of PSAs in CSR07
compared with the number set in SR04. The PSAs will aim to capture
the Government's top national priority outcomes. It is therefore
likely that many of the PSAs will cover outcomes that a number
of government departments will contribute to. Underpinning each
PSA will be a small number of key national performance indicators.
User satisfaction or experience will be included among those indicators
where appropriate.
4. Each department will have strategic objectives
for the CSR period that will cover the totality of their business.
The PSAs will sit alongside these objectives, and are delivered
through them, but they will not be constrained by departmental
structures or cover everything that departments do.
5. The PSAs will be published at the CSR.
They will be underpinned by documents that set out the PSA outcome,
the performance indicators, delivery strategy, contributions from
government departments and governance arrangements. With a measurement
section similar to the Technical Notes of previous Spending Reviews.
These underpinning documents will also be published.
THE HOME
OFFICE'S
DIRECTION OF
TRAVEL—OVERVIEW
6. Those PSAs that the Home Office contributes
to are likely to have an increased emphasis on public protection
with indicators that seek to capture severity and vulnerable groups
rather than purely incidence volumes.
7. There is likely to be an increase in
local flexibility with fewer centrally mandated targets so that
local agencies have greater freedom to respond to local priorities.
The 2006 Local Government White Paper set out proposals for a
new Local Government Performance Framework (LGPF) in which the
aim is to have a maximum of 200 performance indicators that apply
to Local Authorities working alone or in partnership. There will
be a new policing and community safety performance framework that
joins up performance assessments used by the police and their
partners and that directly supports the crime and community safety
aspect of the LGPF.
8. There will be a continued emphasis on
user satisfaction in order to incentivise local service providers
to orientate their services towards the expectations of the local
community.
9. We expect there will be more emphasis
on government departments working together to tackle cross cutting
issues such as crime reduction and the harms caused by alcohol
and drugs which are not just about policing activity but also
dependant on providing opportunities for young people, tackling
social exclusion, and reducing re-offending.
10. We expect target levels will be consistent
with the CSR financial settlement for the Home Office and other
government departments.
THE HOME
OFFICE'S
DIRECTION OF
TRAVEL—DETAIL
Departmental Strategic Objectives
— help people feel safer in their
homes and local communities; and
— support visible, responsive
and accountable policing.
11. In SR04 we set a PSa to reassure the
public and increase confidence. We expect to retain an emphasis
on these issues in order to incentivise local delivery partners
to orientate their services towards the expectations of the local
community.
12. We are looking to improve some of the
performance indicators. For example, we are considering alternatives
to the British Crime Survey (BCS) fear of crime indicator currently
used as the figures are already low which makes it difficult to
track improvements.
Departmental Strategic Objective: protect the
public from terrorist attack
13. We are looking to see whether it would
be possible to develop a PSA in this area to reflect the strategic
importance of counter terrorism across government. This is ambitious
as we have never had a counter terrorism PSA before. If we do
develop a PSA in this area, the details will not be public.
Departmental Strategic Objective: cut crime, especially
violent, drug and alcohol related crime
14. In SR04 we set a target to reduce the
overall volume of crime by 15% (measured by the BCS) and further
in high crime areas. We are considering the following improvements:
— A framework that provides local
areas with greater freedom to set their own targets rather than
having them set centrally. This might include the use of national
minimum standards.
— Performance indicators that
recognise the level of severity of different crime types. We have
looked at various options for weighting including the economic
cost of crime and sentencing severity. But weightings are complicated
and we may therefore opt for grouping different crime types by
bands of severity.
— Since implementing the National
Crime Recording Standards the quality of Recorded Crime data has
continued to improve. Although the BCS was not subject to the
same quality issues, it too has limitations. It does not capture
crimes against youths or businesses and it can not be used at
a local level or to track those crime types that are relatively
rare but more serious. We are therefore re-assessing the tradeoffs
between the limitations of these data sets and whether it is now
appropriate to make greater use of Recorded Crime statistics in
the PSA, to support effective management of performance at both
the national and local levels.
— The SR04 re-offending standard
counted the proportion of offenders that re-offended within a
set period compared with a predicted rate. We are considering
a development of this indicator that takes into account the frequency
and severity of re-offending. However, this inclusion of both
these dimensions is complex and measures are still being fully
developed. We are considering including re-offending as a PSA
performance indicator rather than as a separate standard as in
SR04.
15. In SR04 we set a target to reduce the
harms caused by drugs as measured by the Drug Harm Index. Although
the Harm Index captures the outcome, in practice stakeholders
and delivery partners use the constituent statistics in performance
management. We are therefore considering whether to use these
statistics for the PSA rather than the Harm Index. These statistics
might include: use by young people, the links to social exclusion,
the health impacts and drug treatment, acquisitive crime (a proportion
of which is used to fund drug habits), violent crime (a proportion
of which is related to alcohol abuse) and as part of these, reducing
re-offending.
16. We are considering whether to include
tackling the harms associated with excessive consumption of alcohol
in the new PSA set to assist delivery of Safe, Sensible, Social.
The next steps in the National Alcohol Strategy which was
published on 5 June 2007.
17. Anti-social behaviour remains a priority
concern and we expect a continued focus on anti-social behaviour.
Departmental Strategic Objective: strengthen our
borders, fast track asylum decisions, ensure and enforce compliance
with our immigration laws and boost Britain's economy
18. In SR04 we set a PSA to reduce unfounded
asylum claims as part of a wider strategy to tackle abuse of the
immigration laws and promote controlled legal migration. We set
targets to reduce unfounded asylum claims and, although not formally
part of the PSA, a target to remove more failed asylum seekers
than there were unfounded applications. For CSR07 we are looking
to develop a PSA on controlled and fair migration that protects
the public and contributes to economic growth. This would include
a set of performance indicators that track delivery of the strategy
published last July particularly in the areas of:
— Secure borders, where the outcome
is difficult to measure directly and so we are considering proxy
measures.
— Fast tracking asylum claims.
— Ensuring and enforcing compliance
with our immigration laws. A proxy for this might capture enforcement
action taken to tackle and remove failed asylum seekers, illegal
workers, overstayers, and increasing the identification and removal
of the most harmful cases that present a risk to the public. As
a further deterrent, a target to increase sanctions on those who
profit from illegal working and trafficking is being considered.
— Boosting Britain's economy by
bringing the right skills here from around the world and ensuring
this country is easy to visit legally. A proxy for which might
be a measure of the economic benefit of migration and further
work is underway to determine appropriate data. However, there
are difficulties in being able to performance manage this directly.
Departmental Strategic Objective: safeguard people's
identity, and the privileges of citizenship
19. During the CSR07 period we will put
in place the infrastructure for the National Identity Scheme and
begin to issue ID cards to British citizens. The National Identity
Scheme will deliver significant benefits in terms of protecting
the public, improving government services and enabling business
efficiencies. But the bulk of these will be not accrue until after
the SR07 period. Consequently there may not be a specific outcome
target in this area in the CSR07 period.
Departmental Strategic Objective: work with our
partners to build an efficient, effective and proportionate Criminal
Justice System
20. In SR04 we set a target to increase
the number of offences brought to justice to 1.25 million. We
are considering with the Ministry of Justice and the Attorney
General's office whether the performance indicator might be adapted
to:
— account for different levels
of severity; and
— align better with crime reduction
by using an indicator that is a proportion of recorded crime.
21. We are considering a continued emphasis
on victim and witness satisfaction, tackling disporportionality
and the general public's confidence in the system.
22. We are looking to include in the PSA
set an incentive to tackle organised crime. However, options for
performance indicators in this area are limited as they often
count the volume of police activity rather than a reduction in
organised crime. The value of criminal assets recovered may be
the best proxy indicator at this stage.
18 July 2007
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