Humberside PEEL 2017

Humberside Police continues to be good at treating all the people it serves with fairness and respect. The force understands the importance of procedural justice principles, which are reflected within its values, and standards are effectively communicated both to the workforce and the public. Those values are underpinned by the Code of Ethics, are understood by the workforce, and are reflected in force policies. Not all officers and staff had received training on unconscious bias and how to overcome it, however, and we found that understanding of it was mixed, with some having good understanding and others none at all. The force has provided its officers and staff with effective communication skills training, and officers were able to provide examples of when they had used it. The force has an external scrutiny function which examines a range of topics, including use of coercive powers, but it has only recently put in place external scrutiny of its use of stop and search. The force needs to ensure that its officers and supervisors understand what constitutes reasonable grounds for the use of stop and search. The force captures the data on its use of force; however, it needs to improve how it scrutinises this information to improve its monitoring of the use of force, to reassure itself that officers are acting fairly and proportionately and to identify areas for individual and organisational improvement in its use of these powers.

HMICFRS found that the force continues to be good at ensuring that its workforce behave ethically and lawfully. We found that the workforce generally felt that force leaders demonstrate ethical behaviours and reinforce expected standards of behaviour within the workplace. The force ensures that all its policies are in line with the Code of Ethics. It has provided training and support to all members of the workforce to take an ethical approach to decision making. Although it does have some internal scrutiny of policies and procedures, it does not have an external ethics committee to support ethical decision making. It has an accessible complaints reporting process, but it should ensure that investigations conducted outside the PSB include regular and meaningful updates to complainants. The workforce understand what constitutes discrimination and how to identify, respond to and investigate it appropriately. The workforce have confidence in the force to conduct investigations involving discrimination.

Humberside Police is good at the way it treats officers and staff with fairness and respect. This has improved from last year, when HMICFRS found that the force required improvement. The force has improved in the way that it seeks feedback and challenge from its workforce and now publishes what changes it has made as a result. It has an effective grievance process and responds well, treating all grievances seriously and resolving them quickly. It also records all potential grievances, whether or not they become formal grievances, to allow a more detailed understanding of workforce concerns, trends and themes. The force is taking positive action to address disproportionality in its workforce. The force has continued to focus on improving workforce wellbeing, with continuing activities to support and promote wellbeing; these include travelling road shows, wellbeing and mental health champions, psychological support, and trauma management processes for those who are subject to traumatic incidents. Supervisors have been equipped to recognise and support the wellbeing of their teams, and officers and staff said that they felt well supported by their line managers. The workforce perceive that the force selection processes are fair, open and transparent, and the force has plans to introduce a new scheme to identify talented officers and staff for future leadership posts.