Avon and Somerset PEEL 2016

Avon and Somerset Constabulary is good at treating the people it serves with fairness and respect. It has consulted with the communities it serves to understand their expectations of the service they receive from the police, and has used this feedback to create principles of policing that form the basis of its Be Proud programme. The force continues to use a number of methods to seek wider feedback and challenge from the public, including active monitoring of social media and well-established independent advisory groups that feed into governance structures at both strategic and local levels. The professional standards department reviews complaints and conduct issues and produces a quarterly learning the lessons bulletin that includes feedback from the independent residents’ panel. The force continues to make improvements to the way it uses and scrutinises use of stop and search, and service delivery, and also to demonstrate to the public that it has done so.

Avon and Somerset Constabulary is good at ensuring that its workforce behaves ethically and lawfully. The force has a well-established vetting process that complies with national guidance. The values of the force, the Code of Ethics and other integrity-related policies are regularly reinforced to the workforce. The force has a counter corruption strategy and a process to assist it in identifying, understanding and managing the risks to integrity. Preventative work making clear to officers and staff the unacceptable nature of abusing their authority for sexual gain is less developed.

The force engages with the public about the outcome of serious misconduct cases for officers, but consideration has not been given to publishing the outcomes of staff cases or misconduct cases that do not result in the dismissal of officers and staff. The force’s publishing of misconduct cases internally has not been regular recently, but the force has plans to address this.

In our 2016 national overview of police legitimacy, we recommended that all forces should have started to implement a plan to achieve the capability and capacity required to seek intelligence on potential abuse of position for sexual gain. In 2017, we reviewed of the plans put in place by all forces to in response to this recommendation.

Abuse of position assessment – Avon and Somerset Constabulary

Avon and Somerset Constabulary is working hard to ensure that it treats its workforce fairly, and with respect. We identified a number of good initiatives to encourage feedback from the workforce. All the officers and staff we spoke with said they could raise problems or concerns in a number of different ways, and felt that they would be listened to. The chief constable road shows provide good opportunities for staff and officers to raise concerns on any subject directly with the chief constable, however this is limited to supervisors and managers. The force can demonstrate that it understands and values the importance of workforce wellbeing, and has clear plans in place to deliver improvements. However the workforce’s awareness of wellbeing activity – particularly with regard to mental health – was limited. The force’s current performance assessment process is not considered to be fair and effective by the workforce, and the force has plans to implement a new process by the end of 2016.