West Mercia PEEL 2017

West Mercia Police requires improvement in aspects of treating the people it serves with fairness and respect. Positively, its leaders demonstrate that they understand and value the benefits of procedural justice, and the force supports its frontline officers and staff by providing training that helps to ensure they act fairly, treat people with respect and can communicate effectively. The force has reviewed its arrangements to scrutinise its use of stop and search powers and made considerable improvements in this area of policing; however, it still needs to do more. It lacks understanding of its use of force, and needs to remedy this by improving its analysis and scrutiny of data and other information, for example footage from body-worn video.

The force encourages external scrutiny; it has good structures in place and senior leaders provide support to different groups and act on their feedback. The force would benefit from involving young people more to gain a better understanding of what affects the public’s perception of fair and respectful treatment, particularly among those groups who may have less trust and confidence in the police.

West Mercia Police’s leaders consider the ethical implications of their decisions and role model the force’s values. The force’s trust, integrity and ethics (TIE) committee considers ethical matters and reviews policies and procedures in line with the Code of Ethics, and the workforce understand how to consider the ethical implications of their decisions.

The force promotes access to the complaints system, but it needs to do more to update complainants, witnesses and those subject to allegations in a timely way, to support complainants who may need extra assistance and to target communications at communities that trust the police less. West Mercia Police acts to ensure that those who identify, respond to and investigate discrimination understand their responsibilities, but it needs to improve its referral of matters to the IPCC and its standards of investigation into allegations of discrimination.

West Mercia Police requires improvement in some aspects of treating its workforce with fairness and respect. The force’s leaders demonstrate that they are open to feedback from the workforce and they involve the workforce in decision making. The force understands the importance of addressing disproportionality in the recruitment, retention and progression of officers and staff with protected characteristics, but it has made limited progress in this area.

Officers and staff told us that senior leaders prioritise their wellbeing and they perceive this commitment to be authentic. However, pressures are evident in frontline policing roles, and the force needs to focus more on mitigating threats to workforce wellbeing, particularly in the light of imminent changes to its operating model. The force’s arrangements to assess and develop the individual performance of officers and staff are ineffective because of a lack of clear objectives, infrequent conversations and limited scrutiny. The force recognises the limitations of its individual performance assessment process (called PDR) and is taking action to address these, including expanding its use of continuous professional development. The force has made changes to its talent selection and promotion processes as a result of feedback arising from previous processes. The workforce generally values these arrangements and perceives them to be fair.