Hampshire PEEL 2016

Hampshire Constabulary has a good understanding of the current and likely future demand for its services. This encompasses not only the crimes and incidents to which it reacts, but also the demand for preventative, proactive services. It has undertaken comprehensive analysis which has informed the resource levels needed for its operating model and continues to revise these in the light of experience.

The force is also taking a number of steps to challenge itself to understand demand that is less likely to be reported. These include working with another police force and a university to develop an evidence base for predicting demand and developing its collaboration with local partners to understand demand in its widest sense. It also recognises how inefficient internal processes produce demand and has numerous examples of measures it has taken to identify and eliminate them.

The force is also developing a good understanding of future demand and taking steps to make its assessments more sophisticated. It has used anticipated future demand to inform the themes of its latest organisational change project. It is developing its capability to address these, including a strong focus on cyber-crime, although it needs to do more to ensure that all staff are suitably trained.

Hampshire Constabulary is good overall in the way that it uses resources to manage demand. It is systematic in its approach to allocating resources to match demand and organisational and financial requirements. It is robust in how it sets priorities and monitors performance; plans are ambitious, priorities clearly defined, outcomes rigorously monitored and mitigating action taken swiftly if required.

Hampshire Constabulary has a long-standing commitment to collaboration and sees this as an important part of its cost-reduction strategy and how it manages demand. A wide range and scale of collaborative arrangements are in place and planned.

The force has a good understanding of how changes to improve efficiency have affected its ability to manage demand. It has a number of processes in place to demonstrate efficiencies it has got from its investment and is making progress to enhance these.

Hampshire Constabulary has some understanding of its current workforce skills and capabilities. This could be better if it had access to a more timely and complete picture of the skills and abilities across the workforce. This would enhance its ability to improve systematically the productivity of the workforce. The force recognises this as an area for improvement. Setting this against the other areas of good performance, however, the overall judgment is that the force is good in its resource management.

Hampshire Constabulary is good overall in the way that it plans for the demand for its services in the future, with some elements of its approach being outstanding.

It is good at identifying and prioritising areas to invest in the future. This is based on realistic and prudent assumptions. However, the force shows particular strength in its comprehensive and ambitious plans to transform service delivery through ICT. In developing these plans, it has brought in expertise, worked collaboratively with partners and consulted the public. It has also begun a second organisational change programme (HC2020) through which it plans to create a workforce with the required capabilities to deal with its future demands, although workforce planning is in its early stages. This, together with its investment in IT, represents a forward-looking, sustainable approach to transforming services, while recognising the need to live within a reducing budget, and a relentless approach to identifying further opportunities to reduce costs.