Serious concerns over Lincolnshire Police's performance
There are serious concerns about the performance of Lincolnshire Police, particularly in how it investigates crime and how quickly it responds to incidents, the police inspectorate has said.
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PEEL 2023–2025: An inspection of Lincolnshire Police
His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) graded Lincolnshire Police’s performance across eight areas of policing. It found the force ‘requires improvement’ in four areas and is ‘inadequate’ in four areas.
HMICFRS found the standards of investigations had deteriorated since its previous inspection. The force needs to improve how it allocates, supervises and carries out investigations to make sure victims are getting the support they need. They also raised concerns that the force isn’t effectively managing registered sexual offenders and needs to have a greater understanding of the risk and make sure there is appropriate capacity and capability.
Inspectors said the force has made several improvements in the force control room, including increasing staffing levels and improving training and its systems. However, despite being raised in its previous inspection, the force still isn’t attending incidents as quickly as it should or meeting its own targets.
The inspectorate also said that the force isn’t aligning its resources effectively to meet its demand, which is a major contributor to the issues it faces. The force needs to understand its demand better and have an operating model to manage this effectively and efficiently.
Following this inspection which took place last year, the inspectorate moved Lincolnshire Police into an enhanced level of monitoring in December. This process provides additional scrutiny and support from across the policing sector to help the force make improvements. Since then, the force has developed improvement plans and HMICFRS is working closely with Lincolnshire Police to focus on improvement.
His Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary Roy Wilsher said:
“I have serious concerns about Lincolnshire Police’s performance in keeping people safe, reducing crime and providing victims with an effective service, particularly on how well the force investigates crime and how quickly it attends incidents following calls to service.
“Since our previous inspection, investigation standards have deteriorated. The force needs to improve its management of investigations to achieve better outcomes for victims of crime.
“Lincolnshire Police receives one of the lowest levels of central funding in relation to its population in comparison to other forces in England and Wales. This has created a growing gap between the force income and expenditure, which has caused a budget deficit. But improvements to processes can still be made despite the budget pressures.
“While the force had a saving plan, this didn’t address several areas of inefficiency. These inefficiencies are increasing its operating costs and worsening its budget deficit. This growing resource gap put pressure on the force’s ability to effectively manage its demand and provide a level of service which the public would expect. The force has undertaken a priority-based budget process to start to address these inefficiencies.
“Due to these concerns, I am in regular contact with the chief constable and have given Lincolnshire Police specific recommendations that set out the areas it needs to focus on. We will continue to work closely with the force to monitor its progress against these important and necessary changes.”
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PEEL 2023–2025: An inspection of Lincolnshire Police
Notes
- For further information, please contact the HMICFRS Press Office on 0300 071 6781 or HMICPressOffice@hmicfrs.gov.uk.
- In 2014, we introduced our police effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy (PEEL) inspections, which assess the performance of all 43 police forces in England and Wales. Since then, we have been continuously adapting our approach.
- We have continued our intelligence-led, continual assessment approach, rather than the annual PEEL inspections we used in previous years.
- We have also changed our approach to graded judgments. We now assess forces against the characteristics of good performance, and we more clearly link our judgments to causes of concern and areas for improvement.
- It isn’t possible to make direct comparisons between the grades awarded in this PEEL inspection and those from the previous cycle of PEEL inspections. This is because we have increased our focus on making sure forces are achieving appropriate outcomes for the public, and in some cases we have changed the aspects of policing we inspect.
- Read more information about the PEEL assessment framework 2023-2025.