2014 PEEL assessment
On 27 November 2014, we published our first PEEL assessment.
Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary’s introduction to PEEL 2014
Hello. I am Tom Winsor and I am Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary. The inspectorate inspects the police on behalf of the public and we are independent, both of Government and of police forces.
Policing costs you, the taxpayer, £13 billion in 2014/15 and you are entitled to know how well your money is being spent. The information we are publishing today will help you to know that and to hold the police to account for how well they are serving you.
Today we are launching the first of our new annual PEEL inspections which have been designed so that you, the public, can see, in as much depth as you like, how your force is performing, using our easy-to-navigate, interactive website. PEEL stands for Police Effectiveness, Efficiency and Legitimacy and we’ve inspected all 43 police forces in England and Wales against those categories. This year we have graded all forces on how efficient they are, with five forces being outstanding, 35 graded as good, three require improvement, and no forces considered to be inadequate. We have also graded some aspects of effectiveness, without giving an overall judgment.
Next year will be the first full year of PEEL inspections, and all forces will be given a grading against each of the three categories. We’ll be looking at how forces have
improved in performance from this year.As well as the detailed local information we are publishing today, we are also publishing our assessment of the overall state of policing, which raises important questions about how well the police prevent and reduce crime, how efficient they are and how far they act with integrity. Taken together, the local information and our national assessment give the fullest picture we have ever had of the state of policing in England and Wales.
2014 was a transitional year for HMIC, as we developed this new way of reporting to the public on each police force’s performance. Previously, we monitored police force data to identify problems or issues, and carried out inspections on specific subjects, such as domestic abuse. We haven’t stopped looking at these important subjects, or examining police data, but how we report what we find has changed.
Each force has a PEEL assessment, which draws together all the information we have from inspections, monitoring and consultation in the previous 12 months. We use this evidence to produce an assessment of how the force has performed. In 2014, some areas included a graded judgment of outstanding, good, requires improvement, or inadequate.
The first PEEL assessment combined more traditional inspections with those that were designed to allow graded judgments to be made. The inspection findings were used to answer 13 questions and we were able to make a graded judgment on six of these. There is more information below on the questions which were answered as part of PEEL 2014.
This sections below set more information on how HMIC carried out the first PEEL assessment, including:
The methodology
The document below sets out the detailed methodology for the 2014 PEEL assessment.
Read the methodology for the 2014 PEEL assessment (PDF document)
Force assessments in 2014
The first PEEL assessment answered the following questions for each police force in England and Wales:
Areas where graded judgments were made
Effectiveness
- How effective is the force at reducing crime and preventing offending?
- How effective is the force at investigating offending?
- How effective is the force at tackling anti-social behaviour?
Efficiency
- To what extent is the force efficient?
- To what extent is the force taking steps to ensure a secure financial position for the short and long term?
- To what extent has the force got an affordable way of providing policing?
Areas with a narrative
Effectiveness
- How effective is the force at protecting those at greatest risk of harm?
- How effective is the force at tackling serious, organised and complex crime?
- How effective is the force at meeting its commitments under the Strategic Policing Requirement?
Legitimacy
- What are the public perceptions of the force?
- To what extent does the force respond to calls for service appropriately?
- To what extent are the data and information provided by the force of a high quality?
- To what extent does the force ensure that the workforce acts with integrity?
National assessment
The Police Act 1996, requires Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary to report each year on his assessment of the efficiency and effectiveness of policing in England and Wales. His national assessment of policing was published alongside the PEEL assessments. It contains details of the performance of all police forces which are not funded by the Home Office, for example, the British Transport Police or the Civil Nuclear Constabulary.
Read ‘State of Policing: The Annual Assessment of Policing in England and Wales 2013/14’
PEEL assessments consultation
We are conscious of our responsibility to balance the inspection demands we place on forces with the benefits they and the public receive from our work.
To this end, HMIC is consulting with the public, the police service and other interested parties in developing both the overall programme, and the inspections within it.
Public consultation
We need the views of the public, the police service and others as we develop our new approach. We ran a public consultation over the summer in 2014 and our proposed approach to the PEEL assessment programme was set out in our full consultation document. Please note that this consultation is now closed.
Our consultation response
Most of the questions we asked in the consultation related to the PEEL assessments which will be published in 2015. We asked for your views on how our programme of inspection should be carried out, and whether you agreed with our proposals.
The first PEEL assessments, which will be published in November 2014, had to be designed and carried out before we could carry out a full consultation, and we weren’t able to wait for the responses to come in first. However, any responses to our public consultation which referred to the 2014 assessment have been considered and we have published our response to those particular comments.
Ipsos MORI research
HMIC commissioned Ipsos MORI to conduct research with frontline police officers and police staff and the public about our approach to the PEEL assessments. Ipsos MORI interviewed a nationally representative sample of 1,804 members of the general public in England and Wales using a face-to-face general public omnibus survey, and these findings provide an overview of the public’s immediate response to the proposal for the PEEL assessments. To allow our proposed approach to be presented and discussed in more detail; five evening workshop events were held with members of the general public.
Victims of certain types of crime were also interviewed separately to gain their views on the service they received from the police.
Interviews with police officers and staff were also conducted across five police forces in order to hear the views of those working on the frontline.
The research also informed the 2015 PEEL assessment.
Surveys
In March and April 2014, we surveyed the public and local councillors to find out how they get information on police performance.
Read the results of the public survey (PDF document)
Read the results of the local councillors survey (PDF document)
Other consultation
We also consult on the development of PEEL assessments by:
- asking the HMIC Reference Group (which includes representatives from the Association of Chief Officers (ACPO), the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC), the College of Policing, the Home Office, and a number of other national representative bodies) to meet more frequently for the period of our change programme;
- involving HMIC’s Technical Advisory Group and other practitioners and experts from the police service heavily in developing our methodology;
- putting in place plans to give all forces and local policing bodies/police and crime commissioners the opportunity to discuss concerns in relation to the new inspection programme, be fully informed about its likely effect, and – most importantly – to work with us to help find an approach in which proportionate demands on forces are balanced with achieving the aim of increasing public understanding of how police forces are performing; and
- meeting with our advisory board.