Cleveland PEEL 2017

Cleveland Police clearly values and communicates the importance of treating people with fairness and respect. The force has invested into improving the understanding of officers and staff on how to treat people with fairness and respect, including training relating to unconscious bias and communication skills. The officers and staff we spoke to were able to articulate this understanding and also had good understanding of how to use coercive powers fairly and lawfully. However, we were disappointed to find that the force continues to require improvement in the way grounds for stop and search are recorded, and has only recently introduced monitoring of comprehensive data on the use of force. The force’s external scrutiny groups do not include any young people and there is no external scrutiny of the use of police powers such as stop and search or use of force.

The force is improving its processes to ensure its workforce behaves ethically and lawfully. It has good ethical leadership and ethical decision-making across the workforce, as a result of effective leadership, communication and training, and has made considerable progress in this area, particularly through the ‘Everyone Matters’ programme. The force has made limited progress towards addressing the backlog of officers and staff who require re-vetting. The force could do more to make the complaints system accessible to all, and it needs to improve the way it keeps complainants updated, although we were pleased to find that the force is generally good at identifying, responding to and investigating discrimination. The force recognises these concerns and intends to address them as a result of an independent review of its professional standards department.

The force is consistently good at seeking feedback and challenge from the workforce. The force is also generally good at identifying, investigating and resolving grievances, although we did find the time it takes to process a grievance is too long in most cases, which can have a negative impact on the wellbeing of those involved. We also found that the workforce has little confidence in using the grievance process for fear of repercussions. The force understands the importance of addressing potential disproportionality in recruitment, retention, and progression, and continues to prioritise the need for a more diverse workforce.

Cleveland Police prioritises wellbeing and has a good understanding of the threats and risks to the wellbeing of its workforce. The force has an effective range of mechanisms to which individuals can be referred, although this provision is not fully recognised within some local policing areas and not all supervisors have yet been trained to identify the early warning signs of wellbeing problems. The force’s management and development of individual performance requires improvement. It has assessed and improved its promotion processes in line with best practice, although the force has no way of systematically identifying or developing talent across its workforce.