Devon and Cornwall PEEL 2017

The force is good in the way it treats the people it serves with fairness and respect. Leaders demonstrate a commitment to treating people fairly and ethically. Officers and staff are mostly well-trained, understand how to communicate effectively and use their coercive powers fairly. They are aware of unconscious bias and how it can affect their dealings with the public. Use of force monitoring takes place, but recent changes have not yet shown any benefit. The force reviews its stop and search activity in a number of ways, but monitoring remains incomplete pending the routine availability of body-worn video footage. Officers need to demonstrate they understand stop and search grounds and know how to record them properly.

Devon and Cornwall Police has areas of good practice in how it ensures its workforce behaves ethically and lawfully, but needs to make improvements in how it deals with complaints and discrimination allegations. Leaders are clear and visible in the promotion of ethical conduct and decision making based upon ethical judgments is evident across the force.

Staff training and force systems mean that the public can make a complaint against the force relatively easily, but more information needs to be made available in public areas of police stations. Workforce awareness of potential discrimination is high, but the force needs to improve the way that it investigates discrimination allegations, the way that it keeps complainants updated and ensure that all relevant referrals are made to the IPCC.

Overall, Devon and Cornwall police is good at treating its workforce with fairness and respect. It has well-functioning feedback and challenge processes between the workforce and senior leaders. The force has resources and activity in place to address disproportionality in recruitment, retention and promotion. Its approach to wellbeing is outstanding. The financial and human investment is significant and well-planned, demonstrating the importance the force attaches to this subject. Wellbeing leadership is evident at all levels, with new approaches to old problems and tangible cultural change in the workplace. However, the force needs to improve some of its other people-management processes, most notably individual performance assessment (PDR), which are not as fair or effective as they need to be.