Thames Valley PEEL 2018

This question was not subject to detailed inspection in 2018/19, and our judgment from the 2017 effectiveness inspection has been carried over. However, this inspection identified one area for improvement:

• The force should evaluate and share effective practice routinely, both internally and with partners, continually to improve its approach to the prevention of crime and anti-social behaviour.

As part of our risk-based approach to inspection, we reviewed the force’s progress in this area. The force now publishes a regular internal document summarising what staff have learned from academic research on policing topics. However, officers in safer neighbourhood teams told us that they hadn’t received much information about effective practice. The force still has some work to do to fully address this area for improvement.

The force requires improvement in how it investigates crime.

Serious crime is investigated well, but the investigation of less complex crime needs to improve. The force closes some investigations too early, it doesn’t record victim contract details consistently, and supervision is not always effective. Investigators experience delays in receiving forensic evidence and evidence from electronic devices.

The force knows it needs to improve in this area. It has created a comprehensive plan to achieve this and a chief officer is leading the plan. This is still in its early stages, but the action the force is starting to take is encouraging.

The force is good at catching criminals. It has effective processes in place to identify foreign national offenders who are arrested and makes good use of the Police National Computer (PNC) to circulate information about people who are wanted for arrest. It provides timely information to its staff about people wanted for arrest in their area.

Thames Valley Police is good at understanding and identifying vulnerable people.

It is good at identifying them when they first make contact. It will become easier for staff to identify vulnerable people and record risks to them when the force installs its new contact management system.

Staff are good at recording the risk to victims of domestic abuse. We found that the force works well with partner organisations to protect and support vulnerable people.

The force records significantly more domestic abuse crimes than at the time of our 2017 inspection, but the number of arrests and people taken to court have remained similar. In addition, it makes less use of domestic abuse protective powers than most other forces in England and Wales. It recognises the need to improve in this area and has some plans, but it needs to make sure it fully understands why its enforcement activity has lagged recorded crime.

The force manages dangerous and sex offenders well but needs to make sure it is proactive in how it identifies online sex offenders.

This question was not subject to detailed inspection in 2018/19, and our judgment from the 2016 effectiveness inspection has been carried over. However, Thames Valley Police had three areas for improvement in the 2016 effectiveness inspection. These were:

• The force should further develop its SOC local profiles in conjunction with partner organisations to enhance its understanding of the threat SOC poses and inform joint work aimed at reducing this threat.
• The force should engage routinely with partner agencies at a senior level to enhance intelligence sharing and promote an effective, multi-agency response to SOC.
• The force should improve the awareness of organised crime groups (OCGs) among neighbourhood teams to ensure that they can reliably identify these groups, collect intelligence and disrupt their activity.

As part of our risk-based approach to inspection, we assessed what progress had been made in these areas. All three have been satisfactorily addressed. The force now has a mature approach to dealing with SOC and more data from partner agencies is included in the SOC local profile, which is the force’s summary of local organised crime. There is an active SOC partnership board that co-ordinates the response of various agencies to this sort of criminality. Staff in neighbourhood teams are not only more aware of OCGs, but we found that they play an active role in disrupting their activities.

We inspected how well forces provide armed policing as part of our 2016 and 2017 effectiveness inspections. Subsequent terrorist attacks in the UK and Europe have meant that the police service continues to focus on armed capability in England and Wales.

It is not just terrorist attacks that place operational demands on armed officers. The threat can include the activity of OCGs or armed street gangs and all other crime involving guns. The Code of Practice on the Police Use of Firearms and Less Lethal Weapons (PDF document) makes forces responsible for implementing national standards of armed policing. The code stipulates that a chief officer be designated to oversee these standards. This requires the chief officer to set out the firearms threat in an armed policing strategic threat and risk assessment (APSTRA). The chief officer must also set out clear rationales for the number of armed officers (armed capacity) and the level to which they are trained (armed capability).