Wiltshire PEEL 2017

Wiltshire Police’s leaders clearly understand procedural justice principles and promote the force values and behaviours to improve the extent to which all officers and staff treat the public with fairness and respect. Officers and staff understand the importance of communication skills in their interactions with the public and clearly demonstrate use of these skills, for example when dealing with vulnerable people. The force is also committed to addressing the risks presented by unconscious bias in the workforce. However, unconscious bias training is not provided to all members of the workforce and knowledge of unconscious bias and how to address it in decision making is mixed.

Wiltshire Police continues to develop both internal and external mechanisms to scrutinise the use of force. Firm governance procedures are in place to oversee the use of force by police officers. This ensures that if failings in procedures or any misuse of force are identified, there are measures to hold individuals to account and for the organisation to learn. However, the force has so far failed to introduce an independent advisory group, which would strengthen local and force-wide accountability and scrutiny arrangements. We were reassured to see well-developed plans to introduce independent advisory groups to oversee the use of police powers; this will deepen public scrutiny of the force and will be an area of interest for HMICFRS in future inspections.

Ethics and values are firmly established in Wiltshire Police. Senior leaders set standards of force behaviours and values through leadership events and staff forums and use operational examples to role model and reinforce these. The force is improving its process for officers and staff to refer ethical issues. One hundred workforce volunteers are working with the chief officer team to ensure the scheme meets the needs of those using it, although we found that wider knowledge of these changes was limited. The force makes the complaint system easy to access, but it could do more to support those people who may have less trust and confidence in the police. The force is good at keeping complainants updated on the progress of their complaints and it generally identifies and responds appropriately to allegations of discrimination. The force undertakes satisfactory investigations into allegations of discrimination, in line with IPCC guidelines, and provides a good level of overall service to complainants and other interested parties.

The senior leaders in Wiltshire Police are committed to treating the workforce with fairness and respect, including demonstrating a strong commitment to addressing workforce disproportionality. The chief constable makes himself and his senior team directly available to the workforce and we found evidence that concerns raised are listened to and acted on. A good example of this is the extra developmental support put in place for newly promoted sergeants. The wellbeing of the workforce is prioritised; all chief officers have personal objectives to drive through improvements for frontline workers.

Organisational support for the workforce is also evident through a comprehensive programme of leadership training and development that has been established in the force. We found some examples of frontline officers and staff expressing anxieties about unreasonably high workloads. It would be advisable for the force to determine whether this is of more widespread concern among officers and staff.