North Yorkshire 2018/19

North Yorkshire Police is good at looking after vulnerable people who are victims of crime. From the first contact with a victim, the force recognises when people need support and help. Those who handle calls in the control room can see the records and other information they need to judge how best to work with vulnerable victims. Officers were able to explain to inspectors how they assess risk. But the force should make sure that those risk judgments are properly recorded using the tools available. This would mean the force could be sure that it is offering a consistently good service to vulnerable victims. Officers and staff have recently been trained to recognise signs of vulnerability.

The control room also has good ways of quickly assessing people’s mental health needs at peak times, with plans to offer this service 24 hours a day every day. Street teams in some areas also have the skills to recognise people with mental ill health. However, officers and staff are concerned about the extra pressures resulting from some mental health suites closing.

In some places, daily meetings talk about the ‘most vulnerable, most demanding, most dangerous and most wanted’ people. The force should think about applying this way of working across North Yorkshire so that vulnerability is identified consistently.

The force has improved its data collection on domestic abuse since our last inspection in 2017. It has also introduced an additional post so that court applications in domestic abuse cases are improved and achieve positive results to protect vulnerable victims, with the vast majority of applications succeeding. This is a positive step. However, the force needs to understand why not all high-level domestic abuse cases are being properly referred for multi-agency support.

In 2017, we judged that North Yorkshire Police was good at preventing and tackling anti-social behaviour, investigating crime, and tackling serious and organised crime.