Bedfordshire PEEL 2017

Bedfordshire Police has a good understanding of the importance of treating the people it serves with fairness and respect. It has put in place training and support for officers and staff on communication skills, unconscious bias and the appropriate use of coercive powers, and workforce understanding was good. There is very positive and effective external scrutiny of stop and search and coercive powers more widely, although the force needs to improve how it monitors the use of force, both internally and externally, including evidence from body-worn video equipment.

The force has well-established values that guide the workforce in their decision making and the workforce feel able to raise ethical matters with the chief officer team. The force develops and reviews policies and procedures in line with the Code of Ethics, and the chief officer team reinforces the importance of ethical decision making during supervisor and senior leadership briefings. There is an internal ethics board and a new ethics panel with external representation that considers ethical dilemmas and provides support and guidance, although this needs to be communicated more effectively. It is easy to make a complaint on the force’s website, with language options and support for people who are visually or hearing impaired. However, front counters have limited information about making complaints. Public complaints of discrimination are generally identified and investigated well, and complainants are usually given updates on the progress of the investigation in a timely way. However, the force should ensure that it refers to the Independent Police Complaints Commission all cases of discrimination that meet the mandatory referral criteria. Further, for cases of misconduct, it needs to improve the extent to which it updates witnesses and victims regularly. The force is making good progress to achieve compliance with the national vetting policy, although this is unlikely to be achieved by the deadline set in our 2016 nationwide recommendation.

Bedfordshire Police is good at treating its workforce with fairness and respect. Good progress has been made in listening to the workforce through recent surveys to understand workforce perceptions of fairness and respect with officers and staff feeling able to challenge, provide feedback and freely admit mistakes. They consider their wellbeing to be adequately supported by senior managers. Some positive schemes are promoting a preventative approach to enhancing the wellbeing of the workforce, and the force is undertaking analysis to understand the risks and threats to the organisation. The way that grievances are dealt with could be improved. Through its work in the strategic alliance, Bedfordshire Police is able to demonstrate that it is developing fair and effective performance assessment, and working on improving how it identifies potential senior leaders. However, the force could do more to support supervisors in performance assessment and to ensure the quality and fairness of the process. It has made a good start in developing an effective mentoring scheme. It has improved its selection and promotion processes and most of the workforce perceive these as open and fair.