Hertfordshire PEEL 2016
Legitimacy
How legitimate is the force at keeping people safe and reducing crime?
To what extent does the force treat all of the people it serves with fairness and respect?
Officers and staff across Hertfordshire Constabulary understand the importance of treating people with fairness and respect. Ethical leadership has been provided by chief officers, who have set out the force’s values in a code of practice, ‘The Herts Way’. This has been effectively promoted and adopted across the workforce.
The force seeks feedback using a range of methods, including surveys and engagement activities. It has set up KINs, and consults the Hertfordshire Equality Council on equality and diversity issues. Neighbourhood teams organise local ‘street meets’ and surgeries.
Hertfordshire Constabulary collects information from victim satisfaction and other surveys, complaints and local news monitoring, but it is not clear how this is acted upon.
Stop and searches are now recorded adequately, after HMIC found in 2015 that the force was not compliant with the Best Use of Stop and Search scheme. The information gathered in a Victims’ Voice survey has changed the way in which victims are supported. The workforce survey at the end of 2015 led to positive changes in the way the force expects its staff to treat people.
How well does the force ensure that its workforce behaves ethically and lawfully?
We found that Hertfordshire Constabulary and the alliance are doing some positive work on identifying and enforcing standards of behaviour through the PSD publications, leadership briefings, training for new recruits and specialist training on areas such as autism. However, HMIC has serious concerns that the force and its alliance partners are not yet in a position to ensure that the workforce behaves ethically and fairly.
We found too few of the recommendations we made in our Police Integrity and Corruption inspection in 2014 had been implemented. For example, the force still does not have the capacity to vet the workforce adequately, and not all officers and staff we spoke to understood why they needed to declare business interests. We found that those recommendations that had been completed had only been completed recently and under the new leadership.
The alliance PSD, which includes the ACU and vetting unit, is currently the subject of an improvement plan, resulting from the collapse of a serious gross misconduct court case due to concerns about the quality of the investigation. The alliance response includes new heads of both the PSD and the ACU, who have brought with them experience, capability and the commitment to bring about improvements quickly. To implement improvements effectively, the force and alliance must ensure that these units have sufficient capacity, capability and support.
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 – Hertfordshire Constabulary
Areas for improvement
- Annually, the force should produce a local counter-corruption strategic assessment and control strategy, to identify risks to the force’s integrity
Cause of concern
The risks that HMIC identified in 2014 and the lack of progress of the recommendations, until recently following the collapse of a court case, is of serious concern.
Recommendations
Hertfordshire Constabulary, together with the other forces in the alliance, namely Bedfordshire Police and Cambridgeshire Constabulary, should:
- review the capacity and capability of its PSD and ACU to ensure they can manage their work effectively;
- establish and operate effective processes for identifying and managing individuals at risk of corruption;
- ensure it complies with all aspects of the current national guidelines for vetting; and
- improve its workforce’s understanding of all corruption prevention policies.
To what extent does the force treat its workforce with fairness and respect?
Hertfordshire Constabulary employs a wide range of methods to identify and understand the issues that affect its workforce, including surveys, regular engagement with representative groups and online messaging. Representative groups told us that they felt informed and engaged. The force has also shown that it reacts to information supplied through surveys and other channels. For example, recent training sessions were structured around the results of a staff survey.
Hertfordshire Constabulary understands and values workforce wellbeing. It is providing improved wellbeing services for its workforce. However, some of those to whom we spoke expressed concerns that their workloads, combined with a lack of opportunity to take leave, were leading to stress-related conditions. Figures indicate that a large amount of annual leave is being carried forward each year.
The force has comprehensive arrangements in place to manage individual performance through PDRs. The workforce largely complies with the process, but we found widespread disenchantment with a system that is not seen as inspiring, engaging, rewarding or dynamic. PDRs are not systematically assessed for effectiveness and fairness, and those to whom we spoke perceived the current system as a frustration and a necessity rather than as a route to professional development.
Areas for improvement
- The force should review the arrangements that allow staff and officers to take annual leave to minimise excessive carry-over of leave.