West Mercia PEEL 2014

West Mercia Police has structures and processes in place to understand its demand and put the right resources in place to tackle this. It had an effective range of partnerships to tackle short term and long term problems in its communities.

The force uses a range of tactics to divert and disrupt offenders and to manage those who are assessed as higher risk.

West Mercia Police has a victim-centred approach and a strong focus on ensuring that the most vulnerable victims receive a service that is bespoke to the individual’s needs and, where appropriate, they receive a joined-up service from other agencies.

HMIC found good levels of scrutiny and supervision across risk assessment, victim contact and crime investigation. There was an emphasis on conducting high quality investigations and commitment to ensure sufficient specialist resources.

HMIC has concerns about the lack of access to specialist skills to investigate child protection cases over the weekend, and the fact that force policy on not taking photographs at certain crime scenes meant that opportunities to gather evidence could be lost.

The identification of and response to anti-social behaviour was evident among safer neighbourhood teams.

There was a clear understanding of the benefits of working with partner organisations to find suitable solutions to both short and longer term problems.

Across the alliance there was evidence of the use of restorative justice and community resolutions as appropriate outcomes.

The domestic abuse inspection found some effective work by West Mercia Police to tackle domestic abuse. However, there were several areas for improvement that the force needed to address before there could be confidence that victims of domestic abuse were provided with a consistent standard of service and that the risk to them was minimised.

The crime inspection found evidence that West Mercia had strong relationships with local domestic abuse support groups and Independent Domestic Violence Advisors. The inspection also reviewed Warwickshire and West Mercia’s joint domestic abuse action plan and found the action plan submitted only covered the HMIC force report recommendations. However, there appeared to be no action plan for either force in response to national priorities.  This template requires forces to outline activity in line with the agreed national priorities for them to improve their response to domestic abuse.

The crime inspection found that organised crime groups are mapped by the force intelligence team and prioritised according to threat, risk and harm and, depending on the risk posed, they are allocated to lead responsible officers to manage. These can include local policing teams, where appropriate.

HMIC found a number of examples where organised crime group mapping had been used to target child sexual exploitation. Following specific operations to tackle child sexual exploitation, a review of gaps in intelligence had resulted in increased coverage of this area.

The value for money inspection found that West Mercia Police’s alliance with Warwickshire had provided greater resilience in specialist roles, particularly in combating firearms, serious, organised and major crimes.

There was no Strategic Policing Requirement inspection for this force.