Lancashire 2018/19

Lancashire Constabulary is good at reducing crime and keeping people safe.

It is good at preventing crime and anti-social behaviour and has a good understanding of what is important to its communities. The constabulary has moved some officers from neighbourhood policing teams to response teams to ensure that calls for service are attended promptly. Although this means there are now fewer people in neighbourhood policing, they spend less time responding to calls and so have more time to focus on solving community problems.

The constabulary shares information with partners such as the council and health services. It conducts analysis to understand problems and works with partners and communities to solve them. It is spending money raised from a council tax increase on more officers to tackle crime in communities. The constabulary needs to make sure that it keeps a record of how it resolves problems, so that it can learn and share what works well.

The constabulary requires improvement in investigating crime. It is working hard to make sure it has enough people to investigate serious crime now and in the future. It is using technology to help it decide which crimes can be solved. This will help it use investigators’ time and skills more effectively. It has trained more people to cope with the rise in cyber and digital investigations.

The constabulary’s new IT system will help the workforce to make the right decisions to protect people. However, not all officers and staff know how to use it properly and many crime reports are not completed correctly. Putting them right can cause delays in the investigation, which means that evidence could be lost. Also, victims of crime might not get the support they need in a timely manner.

Investigations are not being supervised well. Inexperienced officers are not always getting the help they need to conduct investigations. The constabulary knows this and has a plan to improve.

There are good processes for making sure that wanted people are arrested. But the constabulary must make sure that it has all the information it needs to understand the risks that foreign national offenders may present.

The constabulary is good at protecting vulnerable people. Staff answering 999 and 101 calls are trained to identify vulnerable people and make the right decisions to help them.

Officers respond to calls in time to protect people. They make sure people are looked after and record what has happened. They share this information with other agencies that can provide support, such as social services or health, so that both immediate and ongoing needs can be met.

The constabulary is innovative in protecting high-risk victims of domestic abuse. It works promptly with partners to solve the cause of the abuse. It has made sure that it has enough people with the right skills to protect the public from dangerous and sex offenders. People who share indecent images of children are arrested quickly once identified.

The constabulary understands the threat from firearms and has sufficient resources to respond to that threat.

In 2017, we judged the constabulary as good at tackling serious and organised crime.