In 2023–2025, we carried out a PEEL inspection of Staffordshire Police. PEEL stands for police efficiency, effectiveness and legitimacy.
We inspected how well the force performed in several areas of policing. Most of these areas were then graded as outstanding, good, adequate, requires improvement or inadequate.
Find out more about Staffordshire Police
More information about the PEEL assessments
Our inspection assessed how good Staffordshire Police is in nine areas of policing. We make graded judgments in eight of these nine as follows:
We also inspected how effective a service Staffordshire Police gives to victims of crime. We don’t make a graded judgment for this area.
We set out our detailed findings about things the force is doing well and where the force should improve in the rest of this report.
We also assess the force’s performance in a range of other areas and we report on these separately. We make graded judgments for some of these areas.
In 2014, we introduced our police efficiency, effectiveness and legitimacy (PEEL) inspections, which assess the performance of all 43 police forces in England and Wales. Since then, we have been continuously adapting our approach.
We have moved to a more intelligence-led, continual assessment approach, rather than the annual PEEL inspections we used in previous years. Forces are assessed against the characteristics of good performance, set out in the PEEL Assessment Framework 2023–2025, and we more clearly link our judgments to causes of concern and areas for improvement.
It isn’t possible to make direct comparisons between the grades awarded in this PEEL inspection and those from the previous cycle of PEEL inspections. This is because we have increased our focus on making sure forces are achieving appropriate outcomes for the public, and in some cases we have changed the aspects of policing we inspect.
Our reports contain references to, among other things, ‘national’ definitions, priorities, policies, systems, responsibilities and processes.
In some instances, ‘national’ means applying to England or Wales, or England and Wales. In others, it means applying to England, Wales and Scotland, or the whole of the United Kingdom.
I am pleased with some aspects of the performance of Staffordshire Police in keeping people safe, reducing crime and providing victims with an effective service. I am satisfied with most other aspects of the force’s performance, but there are areas in which it needs to improve.
The force has addressed some of the poor performance that we identified in our last report, including in the areas of investigations and responding to the public. But it still has challenges in these areas, particularly in attending incidents in a timely manner and assigning appropriate outcomes to crimes. It also needs to reduce the number of non-emergency 101 calls that are abandoned by callers.
The improvements we observed in our inspection were supported by a much more effective use of data. The force now has a much better understanding of demand, and of its capacity and capability to meet it. We found that both leaders and frontline staff have better access to data to help them understand the force’s performance and the service provided to victims. This helps the force more effectively monitor key areas such as the standard of investigations, how it responds to the public, and how it manages the risk posed by offenders.
The force is aware that there is an issue with how it responds to incidents of domestic abuse. Shortly before our inspection, the force carried out its own audit and found that approximately 38 percent of victims of domestic abuse turn down the opportunity to complete a Domestic Abuse, Stalking and Harassment (DASH) risk assessment. Additionally, it takes the force longer on average to attend grade 2 incidents that are related to domestic abuse than other grade 2 incidents. And officers don’t always use body-worn video (BWV) when attending domestic abuse incidents, which is contrary to the force’s policy. The force must make sure that victims of domestic abuse receive an effective service.
Staffordshire Police has considerably improved how it manages the risk posed by registered sex offenders and offenders who have accessed indecent images of children. It has also improved its oversight of risk assessments and overdue visits to registered sex offenders. And it now shares safeguarding information promptly with children’s social care. We also found it has improved its oversight of the management of suspects.
Nonetheless, the force should make sure it increases its use of ancillary orders to protect victims. It should make sure that it is monitoring whether offenders are complying with orders, and that those on bail for offences of accessing indecent images of children are complying with bail conditions.
The force’s senior leadership team are almost all new in post since our last inspection. Officers and staff have expressed confidence in this team. They understand the move to a more performance-focused culture and why this approach has been taken. The leadership team is seen as visible, which was an issue in our last inspection. But the force should make sure that officers and staff feel adequately consulted on decisions that affect them.
I am pleased with how the force has responded to the concerns identified in the last inspection and I will continue to monitor progress closely.
HM Inspector of Constabulary
Using the College of Policing leadership standards as a framework, in this section we set out the most important findings relating to the force’s leadership at all levels.
The force has a relatively new senior leadership team. Officers and staff have shown confidence in the approach this leadership team has taken.
The force now has better governance structures in place and better access to performance data. This helps it understand how to identify and encourage good performance. Officers and staff have been receptive of this and understand the role they play in improving standards.
The force has improved the visibility and accessibility of its senior leadership, and welcomes feedback from officers and staff. But more could be done to reassure staff that they will be listened to.
Senior leaders have clear plans that set out the force’s priorities, although the force should make sure officers and staff understand these.
The force creates a positive and welcoming culture for new staff, but it should make sure that students and tutors receive sufficient support.
The force is developing its training and development for senior and ‘mid-line’ leaders, and has invested in training, development and support for frontline leaders. It understands the workforce’s skills and accreditations and uses that information to determine how resources should be deployed. But it should make sure it effectively addresses gaps in skills, such as the shortage of professionalising investigations programme level 2 (PIP 2)-trained investigators.
More detail on Staffordshire Police’s leadership is included in the main body of the report.
The reducing crime assessment sets out what Staffordshire Police is doing to reduce crime and how effective this action is. This assessment doesn’t include police recorded crime figures. This is because they can be affected by variations and changes in recording policy and practice, making it difficult to draw comparisons over time.
Staffordshire Police should make sure that emergency and non-emergency calls are answered quickly enough. When they aren’t, opportunities to prevent and reduce crime may be missed. The force also needs to respond to incidents within published timescales, and to update callers if there is likely to be a delay.
The force has improved its understanding of its current levels of demand through the wider use of performance data. This helps it to more effectively monitor the standard of investigations and how it responds to the public, enabling it to provide a better service to victims and improve how effectively it helps to bring more offenders to justice.
The force has improved how often it provides crime prevention advice to the public. This helps the public to become more knowledgeable and involved in the prevention of crime.
The force has been effective at promoting a problem-solving approach in its neighbourhood policing teams and shares good practice in this area, which has helped to reduce crime. The neighbourhood policing teams work effectively with their communities to understand their needs and communicate the force’s priorities. This builds the public’s trust and confidence, encouraging them to share information to help deter crime.
The force has effective multi-agency safeguarding arrangements. But it should do more to get feedback from victims, in order to improve its service and help prevent further crime.
More detail on what Staffordshire Police is doing to reduce crime is included in the main body of the report.
This section describes our assessment of the service Staffordshire Police provides to victims. This is from the point of reporting a crime and throughout the investigation. As part of this assessment, we reviewed 100 case files.
When the police close a case of a reported crime, they assign it an ‘outcome type’. This describes the reason for closing it.
We selected 100 cases to review, including at least 20 that the force had closed with the following outcome:
Action is being undertaken by another body or agency. This includes safeguarding the victim and managing the behaviour of the person responsible.
Although our victim service assessment is ungraded, it influences graded judgments in the other areas we have inspected.
The force needs to improve the time it takes to answer emergency calls. It also needs to reduce the number of non-emergency calls where the caller hangs up before a handler answers it.
When answering calls, call handlers always use a structured process that assesses threat, harm, risk and vulnerability. And they almost always identify repeat victims. This means that they are fully aware of the victim’s circumstances when considering what response the force should give. Call handlers are polite and give victims advice on crime prevention and how to preserve evidence.
On most occasions, the force responds to calls for service appropriately. But sometimes it doesn’t respond within set timescales. And it doesn’t always inform victims of delays, meaning that their expectations aren’t always met. This may cause them to lose confidence and to not want to continue with the process.
In most cases, the force investigates crimes in a timely way. But it doesn’t always complete relevant and proportionate lines of enquiry or supervise investigations well.
The force keeps victims regularly updated. They are more likely to have confidence in a police investigation when they receive regular updates.
A thorough investigation increases the likelihood of perpetrators being identified and arrested, providing a positive result for the victim. In most of the cases we examined, the force took victim personal statements, which give victims the opportunity to describe how that crime has affected their lives.
When victims withdraw support for an investigation, the force considers progressing the case without the victim’s support. This can be an important way of safeguarding the victim and preventing further offences from being committed, although the force doesn’t always record whether it considered using orders designed to protect victims, such as a Domestic Violence Protection Notice or Domestic Violence Protection Order.
The Code of Practice for Victims of Crime requires forces to carry out a needs assessment early in the investigation to determine whether victims need additional support. The force usually carries out these assessments, and records all requests for additional support.
The force doesn’t always assign the appropriate outcome type when it closes an investigation, and it doesn’t always record a clear rationale for the outcome used. These decisions aren’t always effectively supervised, although the force does ask for victims’ views when deciding which outcome type to assign, and tells them which code has been assigned. When appropriate, the force is able to provide an auditable record of victims’ wishes.
Staffordshire Police is adequate at using police powers and treating people fairly and respectfully.
In year ending 31 March 2023, Staffordshire Police recorded 4,238 incidents where force was used. We can estimate how many uses of force should be expected by looking at the number of arrests. Each arrest would usually count as a use of force, so we would expect the number of times use of force is recorded to be at least as high as the number of arrests, if not higher. But over the same time frame, Staffordshire Police recorded 12,123 arrests. This would suggest the force is failing to record the use of force consistently, by at least 7,885 incidents.
In the year ending 31 March 2023, Black and ethnic minority groups made up 10.8 percent of the recorded use of force incidents and 11.7 percent of arrests. This may indicate that not all use of force incidents with people from ethnic minority groups are being recorded.
We also found that the recording of use of force incidents that resulted in an officer being injured may not be accurate. Data provided by the force was sometimes contradictory, with one set of data showing the force as having the highest proportion of officer assaults in the country. Data the force shared with the Home Office suggests that in the year ending 31 March 2023, 7.8 percent of use of force incidents in Staffordshire Police resulted in the officer being injured. This was higher than expected, compared to the 3.6 percent average seen across forces in England and Wales. But other data held by the force showed a lower proportion of assaults on officers following use of force.
We saw that the force’s welfare leads discuss details of officer assaults with local policing areas, and that the issue is a standing agenda item in various performance meetings. But it is important that the force has confidence in its data, so that it can fully understand the link between assaults on officers and the use of force, and to make sure that both officers and the public are better protected. The force anticipates that the accuracy of its data will improve following its adoption of the Operation Hampshire reporting guidelines.
We also found that the internal scrutiny of use of force is less robust than stop and search. Supervisors aren’t expected to review body-worn video (BWV) footage of use of force to the same degree as stop and search, and supervisors we spoke to confirmed that they don’t routinely review BWV footage of use of force.
The force has also decided not to require officers to activate BWV outside the planned use of force. As such, there is no specific requirement for BWV to be activated if use of force is deployed spontaneously due to a change of circumstances during an incident. The force has taken legal advice, as this practice isn’t in line with National Police Chiefs’ Council guidance, which states that: “When officers are using any police powers (such as power of arrest, stop and search, use of force), due to the level of scrutiny some of these powers can attract, then body-worn cameras must be activated, unless there is a justifiable reason not to.”
We did find some good examples of Staffordshire Police working to understand its use of force. For example, it has examined whether force was used disproportionately against certain groups of people, and has improved its guidance for officers about removing suspects from vehicles. But it must make sure that its use of force data is accurate, and that it is confident that the use of force is supported by robust internal scrutiny.
In this section we set out our main findings that relate to police powers and treating people fairly and respectfully.
During our inspection, we reviewed a sample of 235 stop and search records from between 1 December 2022 and 30 November 2023. Based on this sample, we estimate that 80 percent (with a confidence interval of +/- 5.0 percentage points) of all stop and searches carried out by the force during this period had reasonable grounds.
This is broadly unchanged compared with the findings from our previous review of records from 1 January to 31 December 2021, where we found that 75.4 percent (with a confidence interval of +/- 5.3 percentage points) of stop and searches had reasonable grounds recorded. Of the records we reviewed for stop and searches on people who self-identified as being from an ethnic minority background, 26 out of 35 had reasonable grounds recorded.
It is important that officers fully understand the need to record a detailed written explanation of why they considered a search necessary. Stop and search powers are a valuable tool for preventing and detecting crime. But if the force cannot show that it has used the tool fairly and appropriately by keeping records that clearly show reasonable grounds for using it, this risks undermining public trust and confidence. The force should make sure that the recording of reasonable grounds continues to improve.
In September 2023, the force introduced a new template for officers. This includes space to record “Behaviour seen, information from the public and intelligence known”. The force reports that this new prompt has improved the quality of the recording of reasonable grounds. However, the time frame for our audit only covered the initial implementation of this new process, so we only saw limited evidence of the new approach and its effect on the recording of reasonable grounds.
The force trains its workforce on how to manage interactions with the public. This training includes:
During our inspection, we spoke to officers who had received this training. They were able to tell us how it helped their interactions with the public. And they were aware that they should proactively identify and flag incidents that relate to vulnerable members of the public or issues of officer safety.
The way police treat people while exercising their powers has a direct impact on the public’s confidence in policing. During our inspection, we reviewed BWV footage of 20 stop and search encounters with the public. We found that officers communicated effectively, and noted that in every encounter officers treated people with dignity and respect.
We also attended the force’s external scrutiny panel for stop and search, called the Commissioner’s Independent Scrutiny Panel (CISP), and viewed ten other BWV records of stop and search encounters. These replicated the findings from our BWV audit. We noted the compassionate way officers communicated with the subjects of the encounters. In a particularly compelling example, the encounter quickly transitioned from being focused on the search to supporting the individual and tackling some of their underlying vulnerabilities around drug use and housing.
The force told us that, between the end of January 2023 and the end of January 2024, it has increased the use of stop and search by 24 percent, which it tells us is around 1,500–1,600 more stop and search encounters than in the previous year.
There is a risk that, when the use of a tactic increases, officers may perceive that there is a requirement to hit a specific target or use the tactic regardless of whether it is appropriate to a specific encounter. We didn’t see evidence of this in the force’s use of stop and search. Generally, officers told us they didn’t feel that they had a mandatory target that they were expected to reach.
In the year ending 31 March 2023, the force had a linked find rate of 24.6 percent in stop and search. The linked find rate is a measure of how often officers find the object they are looking for when carrying out a search.
Despite increasing the use of the power, the force told us that their linked find rate remained consistent at 25.8 percent at the time of our inspection. This suggests that the force continues to use the power effectively to target criminal activity.
We also saw evidence that the force has been able to increase the use of stop and search through Operation Saltmine. This is an ongoing operation that deploys one of the force’s three mobile police stations, placing officers into communities or areas where a visible presence is most needed. We saw evidence that the placement of these mobile police stations was determined using data to understand where they would have the most effect or would serve a community most at need. The increase in stop and search linked to this operation indicates that the force is using it in a targeted way.
The external scrutiny of police powers in Staffordshire is carried out four times a year by external panels, known as CISPs. These are made up of independent members of the public. In each meeting, they view ten BWV records of a stop and search or use of force encounter, and provide feedback on the officer’s conduct and whether they follow force policy. This feedback is sent directly to the officer. For stop and search, it is also incorporated into ‘60 second briefings’ available on the force’s intranet. The force also has a CISP specifically for the use of force in custody.
CISP attendees are prepared for their role with training sessions, and have the opportunity of a ‘ride-along’ with a police officer to observe policing first-hand.
During our inspection, we found that not all officers were aware of the scrutiny panels. However, particularly in the case of stop and search, they were aware of some of the briefing materials produced from the panel’s feedback.
We found the panels weren’t always well attended, especially in the case of use of force, and their composition wasn’t always representative of all the communities in Staffordshire. The force is looking to increase the range and diversity of feedback it receives from external scrutiny through the introduction of non-vetted scrutiny panels incorporating a wider range of attendees. These will be held in local areas and scrutinise encounters from that area, to better understand the experience of specific communities.
Staffordshire Police also carries out internal scrutiny of the use of force and stop and search. The force’s policy is that all encounters should be reviewed. We found that supervisors routinely review stop and search encounters within their team, and officers routinely told us that they receive helpful feedback from their supervisors. However, the force told us that about 90 percent of incidents are reviewed, rather than 100 percent as required by the policy.
The force has robust internal oversight of stop and search at the force-wide level via its strategic stop and search internal scrutiny meeting. We observed this meeting and found it made good use of a wide range of data to understand stop and search and its effect on the public. It discussed disproportionate use of the power against certain groups of people, changes in the linked find rate, areas or teams demonstrating higher or lower uses of the power, any themes in complaints made by the public, and other key measures. Actions were taken from the meeting and progress was made on them by the relevant leads.
We found that the force’s staff safety group has oversight of the use of force. We saw examples of the group acting on issues around specific types of use of force encounter. But the lack of routine oversight of use of force by supervisors and potential inaccuracies in the data limit the insight the force can have into this important area.
Disproportionality refers to whether certain groups of people are affected by police action in a way that is substantially different from people not of that group. For example, in Staffordshire in the year ending 31 March 2023, the likelihood of Black or Black British individuals being stopped and searched was 2.5 times greater than for White individuals. This is lower than the 4.1 rate of disproportionality for Black or Black British individuals compared to White people across England and Wales for the same time period. But it is important that the force understands what contributes to disproportionality.
We found that the force records data on disproportionality and examines that data in internal monitoring meetings. The data is broken down into certain groups, including ethnic background and age. This information is shared with local policing areas so that officers can better understand disproportionality in their area. We saw evidence of actions being taken as a result of this, such as a review being prompted by an increase in searches for items of harm on individuals who self-identified as being from an ethnic minority background.
The force has also partnered with Keele University to better understand the underlying causes of disproportionality for different ethnic groups. This academic study looked at stop and search data from May 2020 to December 2022. It examined who was subject to stop and search, when and why the tactic was used in certain geographical areas, and the ages of those who were subject to a strip-search.
The initial findings of this study have been shared with the force. They reinforced the existence of disproportionality, particularly in urban areas with high levels of socio‑economic deprivation. The force and university are now moving into a second phase of the project, which will build on these initial findings to better understand and address disproportionality.
Staffordshire Police is good at prevention and deterrence.
The force contact centre adopts a problem-solving approach (identifying the root causes of crime and vulnerability) to reduce demand from members of the public making unnecessary repeat calls for service. It identifies individuals who have made more than three calls within seven days or more than five calls within 30 days. It then works with the neighbourhood policing team for that area to produce a problem-solving plan to deal with the issue. For example, one persistent caller was an elderly resident with dementia; the local policing team worked with partners, including the local council, to provide support and the resident now no longer calls unnecessarily.
A number of repeat callers have been charged and convicted of communication offences such as malicious communications and wasting police time.
In this section we set out our main findings that relate to prevention and deterrence.
The force has made more data available to its officers and staff relating to vulnerable people, groups and locations, repeat antisocial behaviour, victims, and suspects. This data is presented to officers and staff in the form of dashboards on the Microsoft Power BI platform.
We found that neighbourhood policing teams make significant and productive use of these dashboards. This has allowed officers and police community support officers (PCSOs) to identify where to target patrols, community engagement and problem-solving activity. We saw evidence of officers using dashboards to identify such things as repeat suspects, repeat victims, emerging or recurrent crime types, antisocial behaviour incidents and domestic abuse incidents, and then taking action, such as increasing patrols, creating problem-solving plans, providing victims with crime prevention advice or welfare visits, or sharing information with partners to help prevent crime and reduce vulnerability.
The force shares this kind of information with the partner organisations it works with in community safety partnerships, such as the local authority. We found that the tasking meetings for neighbourhood policing included representation from community safety partnerships so that information could be shared easily. The force also has information-sharing agreements with partner organisations, such as housing associations, and has created a process for partners to share data promptly using Microsoft Teams.
One example we found of the force’s use of data to target crime and prevent antisocial behaviour was the Office of the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner’s Space programme. In this initiative, the force used data from its contact centre to identify young people who may be at risk of being involved in antisocial behaviour. These young people were invited onto the programme, which provides diversionary activities such as sport and education over the summer. The force told us that an evaluation of this programme suggested that antisocial behaviour incidents were reduced by up to 75 percent during the summer holidays, resulting in a significant financial saving and reduced calls to the force contact centre.
The force also makes good use of mobile police stations via Operation Saltmine. This is an ongoing project which deploys three mobile police stations to areas of increasing crime or antisocial behaviour. The force reports that thousands of extra hours of additional patrols have taken place as a result, with increases in activities such as stop and search and use of dispersal powers and community resolutions.
In our last inspection, we found that the force didn’t adequately record, monitor or evaluate its problem-solving plans.
During this inspection, we found the force had significantly improved its approach to problem-solving. It provides effective training to its neighbourhood policing teams, including both officers and PCSOs, in how to carry out problem-solving using the SARA model. The force’s two-day training event provides the opportunity to develop these skills further using distance learning to achieve a National Vocational Qualification. The force expects all its officers and PCSOs to have received problem‑solving training by July 2024.
The force also uses a network of ten problem-solving advisors to support neighbourhood policing teams in developing their problem-solving plans. These advisors also have thematic responsibilities. For example, the advisor who leads on mental health works with health services and the local authority to identify opportunities to problem-solve around this particular issue, such as providing notices with suicide prevention advice in key locations. We found evidence that the problem-solving advisors provide useful advice to help increase the quality and range of problem-solving plans.
We viewed a number of problem-solving plans during our inspection and generally found them to be of a good quality. One example was a plan to tackle rough sleeping and drug dealing in a property belonging to a vulnerable person. The force had secured a community protection notice to manage the antisocial behaviour at the address and was taking steps to secure a closure order. But we also found that the force had considered the effect on the wider community, and had completed citizen contact records to track the impact of the activity.
Another example included an issue of children repeatedly going missing from a particular care home. One of the neighbourhood officers worked with children’s social care and schools to identify any potential risks to these children. The care home was unregistered, so they liaised with Ofsted and wrote to the home to say it must be registered immediately or close down. The officer also liaised with the youth offending team, who subsequently visited the property and examined the safeguarding that was in place.
In most of the plans that we viewed, we found there was effective oversight from supervisors, who tracked the quality of plans and suggested additional actions.
The force has improved how it evaluates and shares positive practice. During our inspection, the force introduced its What Works practice bank, which is a repository for successful plans. This means officers can learn from what has been effective in the past, to help guide their plans in the future. Although the practice bank only went live during our inspection, we found evidence of officers already being aware and making use of it.
We found good evidence of the force using its problem-solving approach and its increased access to data to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour.
One example of this involved the use of the neighbourhood policing team and the force’s ‘design out crime officers’. These personnel work with businesses and agencies in Staffordshire, such as car park operators and construction companies, to help design of new projects to reduce the potential for crime and antisocial behaviour. In this case there was a recurrent issue of young people loitering in an alleyway and causing antisocial behaviour, and in some cases assaulting residents. The design out crime officers reviewed the scene and worked alongside the council to redesign the alleyway to provide sufficient lighting in specific areas. The force told us that over the six-month period following the redesign, they received no further calls of antisocial behaviour. The neighbourhood policing team spoke to residents to establish that the reduction in antisocial behaviour was genuine, rather than a result of a fear of reporting further incidents.
Another example of the force’s approach to crime prevention was the promotion of safety for women and girls through work with taxi drivers. Officers worked with taxi drivers to educate them about violence against women and girls. They promoted the use of a safeguarding app, asking taxi drivers to put a QR code in their cab so that passengers can download it while travelling. It also educated drivers on the domestic abuse hand signal, a gesture that can be given to silently alert another person that you are in danger. And it gave drivers personal attack alarms that they could give to their customers.
Neighbourhood policing officers are responsible for problem-solving and getting local communities involved in crime prevention. But often these important duties can be disrupted when neighbourhood policing officers are diverted to other duties, such as supporting response policing by attending emergency or priority incidents. Neighbourhood officers being diverted from their main duties is known as abstraction.
During our inspection, police officers and PCSOs did tell us that they are subject to abstraction. But we found that the force has a clear policy for when and how officers should be abstracted and, more importantly, monitors how frequently this takes place. Police officers and PCSOs fill in a short, computerised form when they are abstracted so the force can understand when, where, why and for how long abstraction occurs. If it meets a maximum threshold, then the force can take action to maintain the service provided by neighbourhood policing officers.
The force’s policy sets this threshold at 25 percent. At the time of our inspection, the force told us that reported abstraction had never gone into double figures, so it hadn’t been required to intervene.
The force is aware that sometimes officers don’t complete abstraction forms, especially if they are particularly busy. But officers told us that they are aware of the need to do so, and the force has provided QR codes in stations that link to the form to reduce the time it takes to complete.
We found that when abstraction does take place, it isn’t always to support emergency demand. We found evidence of neighbourhood officers being used effectively to support other priorities, such as working with the multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH) and local harm reduction hubs to visit vulnerable victims and witnesses.
In our previous inspection, we found the force lacked a community engagement strategy to guide how it works with the communities of Staffordshire to understand their needs and receive information and feedback.
The force now has a clear community engagement strategy and bespoke community engagement plans for each local policing area. These are complemented by key individual network lists, which outline the communities and individuals within a local policing area that neighbourhood officers can contact for advice or to share information. The force effectively records engagement activity and its outcomes using citizen contact records, so officers and senior leaders can understand what engagement has occurred and to what purpose. We saw evidence of officers targeting activity towards specific community events, faith centres, schools and other key locations.
In one example, a school shared information that a child had brought a knife into school due to fear of bullying. The neighbourhood policing team was able to work with the school and provide talks on knife crime, but also bullying and cyberbullying, to address the underlying factors that contributed to the incident.
Neighbourhood officers make good use of Power BI dashboards to understand where to target engagement based on trends in crime and antisocial behaviour, demographic information and other data. The force is developing this further using its community mapping approach, which overlays census and mosaic data about the local population with crime and incident data and information from community contact records. This allows officers, supervisors, and senior leaders to understand at the push of a button what engagement has taken place and what the effect was, both in terms of the immediate outcome and any longer-term effect on crime, antisocial behaviour and other key measures. The force will also use this information to deploy community engagement vehicles to specific areas of need, using funding from Operation Saltmine.
The force uses the ‘Smart Alert’ digital system to inform the public of policing issues, and to request information such as dash-cam or CCTV footage. It also uses social media, and sends a monthly newsletter to 450 stakeholders including MPs, councillors, and community members. It runs a twice-yearly public perception survey asking specific questions about the visibility of police, satisfaction and how safe people feel.
We also found the force makes good use of its independent advisory group. As well as giving feedback on traditional issues such as community engagement and force policies and procedures, this is also actively involved in recruitment, reward and recognition, and other force processes. This is a valuable way for community members to scrutinise force activities, and to actively contribute to the development of the force itself.
Staffordshire Police requires improvement at responding to the public.
The force told us that in the year ending 31 March 2024, 24.4 percent of calls to its non-emergency 101 number were abandoned by callers before they were answered. This is an improvement since our last inspection. However, as set out in the 2020 national contact management strategy principles and guidance, forces with a switchboard should aim to have an abandonment rate of below 5 percent. High abandonment rates for non-emergencies may result in a lot of callers going on to make inappropriate calls to the 999 system. It also means the force has a degree of risk that isn’t understood or addressed, as the content of any abandoned call and the risk related to it is unknown.
The force has improved its understanding of exactly when the caller hangs up during the call. Using that information, it can estimate whether the abandonment has been prompted by the automated interactive voice response system providing suggestions for alternate ways of contacting the force, such as through the website. But the force still lacks a full understanding of whether callers are using alternative methods to contact the force once they have abandoned their calls.
The force is investing in a technological solution for answering common queries that don’t require police attendance, such as members of the public calling for updates on crimes. We will continue to assess the force’s efforts to reduce abandoned calls and provide a better service to the public.
The force doesn’t always respond to calls for service within its target timescales. In our victim service assessment we found that attendance was within the required timescale in 63 of the 87 relevant cases we reviewed. The force only updated callers about delays in attendance in 9 of 24 cases. And deployments in response to a call was effectively supervised in 26 of the 39 relevant cases we reviewed.
If the force isn’t attending incidents within its target times and isn’t informing victims of delays, victims could lose confidence and disengage from the process.
The delays in attendance primarily occur in grade 2 incidents, those that aren’t emergencies but still require an officer to attend. These should be attended within two hours. However, the force’s data about attendance times for grade 2 incidents may be misleading due to its policy for domestic abuse incidents.
When an appointment is made to attend a grade 2 incident at a later time, it is usually downgraded to grade 3. However, the force keeps all domestic abuse incidents at grade 2, even if an appointment has been made, to make sure they continue to be treated as urgent. Because grade 3 incidents have a longer timescale than grade 2 incidents, this approach may make the force’s average attendance times for grade 2 appear longer than they actually are. The force should make sure it understands the full range of factors contributing to high attendance times for grade 2 incidents.
The force should also improve the effectiveness of its supervision of deployments. This will help staff to provide timely updates when delays occur. The force plans to reassess its grading policy, which determines the target timescales for attending incidents, in the coming months.
At the time of our inspection, we found that incidents awaiting attendance were placed in queues while they waited for a unit to be assigned to respond to them. For the first 24 hours that an incident is awaiting attendance, the force contact centre is responsible for managing the response. After that, ownership and management of the response is transferred to local policing teams and their supervisors. This responsibility includes understanding any changing circumstances that might increase or decrease the risk to callers.
Many of these calls relate to vulnerable people, including victims of domestic abuse. We found that the force doesn’t consistently use the threat, harm, risk, investigation, vulnerability and engagement (THRIVE) risk assessment model to reassess these incidents, even though their circumstances might have changed. We also found the force doesn’t consistently contact victims after a certain amount of time to reassess the risk. This could increase the risk to victims and the possibility of evidence being lost. And it may cause victims to lose confidence in the policing response.
The force is increasing the resources for reassessing risk by assigning police officers across local policing areas to review outstanding incidents. The force should continue to make sure incidents are effectively reviewed and assessed while they are awaiting attendance.
In this section we set out our main findings that relate to how well the force responds to the public.
The force needs to improve the time it takes to answer emergency calls. In the year ending 31 March 2024, Staffordshire Police received 200 calls per 1,000 population. This was within the normal range compared to other forces in England and Wales.
Data from BT on 999 call answering times is available on the Police.uk website. The call answering time is the time taken for a call to be transferred to a force and for that force to answer it. In England and Wales, forces should aim to answer 90 percent of 999 calls within ten seconds.
In the year ending 31 March 2024, the force answered 84.9 percent of its 999 calls within ten seconds. This is an improvement since our last inspection in 2022, but still below the expected standard.
Figure 1: Proportion of 999 calls answered within 10 seconds by forces in England and Wales in the year ending 31 March 2024
Source: 999 call answering times from BT
If calls for service aren’t answered promptly, police officers may not be dispatched to protect victims quickly enough. This can lead to losing both public confidence and investigative opportunities.
The force should continue to improve its 999 answering times.
During our inspection, we found that the force has improved its oversight of the ways the public can contact it since our last inspection. The force uses data effectively to understand the level of demand from calls to 999 and 101, and the other ways the public can contact the force. It has been able to assign its resources to the areas of greatest need, and uses a triage function to divert calls to the most appropriate destination. We found that this data is also used effectively in force performance meetings to allow senior officers to have understanding and oversight of the force contact centre.
As well as 999 and 101, the public can contact the force online using live chat, or the Single Online Home platform. The webchat function is used to answer simple enquiries, and members of the public reporting crimes or more complex matters are directed to the Single Online Home.
We found that the force has good oversight of the levels of demand from enquiries still waiting for a response. We checked the queues and found that there were no backlogs or significant delays.
However, we did find that the webchat function was being switched off at times of high demand, and so isn’t always available to the public.
The public can also use social media to interact with the force, and we found that the force monitors the information shared on its social media accounts. Certain keywords on social media are automatically flagged, so there is some level of automatic prioritisation of messages. But the force doesn’t have this function for the Single Online Home, so any prioritisation relies on individual operators manually reviewing the content of information or incidents shared on this platform.
In our last inspection in 2022, we found that the force was poor at carrying out and recording risk assessments. We identified this as an area for improvement.
During this inspection, we found that the force has considerably improved the frequency and quality of its risk assessments, which use the THRIVE model.
In our victim service assessment, we found that call handlers used THRIVE to assess risk and consider the needs of the caller in 87 of 88 cases we reviewed. The THRIVE record was an accurate and meaningful reflection of the circumstances in 84 of the 87 times it was used.
This is a result of the investment the force has made in training and supporting its staff to make more meaningful assessments, and of the improvement in how well it understands the quality of those assessments. We found that the force dip samples the quality of assessments in real-time, and retrospectively reviews a range of assessments. This latter process is further quality assured by a central auditing team to remove the risk of positivity bias due to force contact centre staff reviewing the work of their colleagues. We observed several THRIVE assessments of significant depth, understanding, and quality.
Repeat and vulnerable victims of crime can be at the most risk of harm. We found evidence of a check to identify any repeat victims in 78 of 80 cases, and checks to identify vulnerable people in all 82 of the relevant cases we observed.
As the force now understands the risks involved in a call, it can better safeguard victims and reduce repeat victimisation.
Staff in the force contact centre are able to contact mental health nurses to advise on the best way to respond to people in crisis or otherwise in need of specialist support. While the mental health nurses aren’t physically based in the contact centre, they can be contacted 24 hours a day. Call handlers we spoke to were very positive about the quality of support they receive. The nurses provide advice and access to information and data to help both the call handlers and dispatchers in the force contact centre and the officers and staff who are deployed to incidents.
The force also uses street triage, whereby community psychiatric nurses attend incidents alongside response officers. This is available in the hours of high demand between 4pm and 2am. Response officers we spoke to were very complimentary about the effectiveness of this service. They told us there had been a reduction in the amount of time they spend dealing with incidents where a concern for an individual’s welfare has been raised, and that they are able to more effectively respond to the needs of those individuals.
The force has also adopted the Right Care, Right Person approach. This is a national initiative to support police forces in identifying the most appropriate agency to provide effective support to people in mental health crisis or in need of specialist support, rather than always relying on the police service to be the first responder.
The force adopted this approach in February 2024 after a sustained period of working with partner organisations to make sure it would be effective. The force told us that in the first six weeks of using Right Care, Right Person, they saw a 55 percent reduction in the number of ‘concern for welfare’ incidents attended, compared with the same period in 2023. This is encouraging, and suggests the force will see an improvement in how effectively it can assign its resources and provide the best service to the public.
Staffordshire Police requires improvement at investigating crime.
Staffordshire Police doesn’t always achieve acceptable outcomes for victims, as it doesn’t solve enough of the crimes it investigates. The force needs to understand this issue and improve its outcomes.
In the year ending 31 December 2023, Staffordshire Police recorded 76,199 victim-based crimes. Of these, the force assigned 10.5 percent of these offences an outcome in the ‘offenders brought to justice’ category, such as a charge, summons or caution. This is within the normal range compared with other forces in England and Wales.
Figure 2: Percentage of victim-based crime recorded by Staffordshire Police and all forces in England and Wales by selected outcome types in the year ending 31 December 2023
| Outcome type | Staffordshire outcome rate | England and Wales outcome rate |
| 1 – Charged/summonsed | 6.3% | 5.3% |
| 2 & 3 – Caution – youths and adults | 0.7% | 0.7% |
| 8 – Community resolutions | 2.2% | 1.5% |
| 9 – Prosecution not in the public interest (Crown Prosecution Service decision) | 0% | 0% |
| 10 & 21 – Prosecution not in the public interest (police decision) | 2.6% | 0.7% |
| 14 – Evidential difficulties (suspect not identified but the victim declines or is unable to support) | 5.9% | 5.6% |
| 15 – Evidential difficulties (suspect identified; victim supports police action) | 10.8% | 12.6% |
| 16 – Evidential difficulties (suspect identified; victim does not support or withdraws support) | 27% | 20.7% |
| 17 – Prosecution time limit expired | 0.2% | 0.2% |
| 18 – Investigation complete – no suspect identified | 32% | 43.2% |
| 20 – Action undertaken by another body/ agency | 2.8% | 1.5% |
| 22 – Diversionary, educational or intervention activity | 1.1% | 0.3% |
Source: Police recorded crime and outcomes open data tables from the Home Office
Note: Presented data comes from the April 2024 data release and may have been revised since. British Transport Police and City of London data are excluded from the England and Wales rate. Total police-recorded crime includes all crime (except fraud). For a full commentary and explanation of crime and outcome types, please see the Home Office statistics.
Figure 3: Proportions of victim-based crimes assigned a ‘charged/summonsed’ outcome (outcome 1) by Staffordshire Police between the year ending 31 March 2015 and the year ending 31 December 2023
Source: Police recorded crime and outcomes open data tables from the Home Office
Note: Presented data comes from the April 2024 data release and may have been revised since. Victim-based crimes are defined as all police-recorded crimes where there is a direct victim, such as an individual, an organisation or corporate body.
Between the year ending 31 December 2022 and the year ending 31 December 2023, the proportion of victim-based crimes to which Staffordshire Police assigned the outcome ‘evidential difficulties (suspect identified, victim does not support action)’ (outcome 16) decreased from 30.8 percent to 27 percent. This is still higher than expected compared with other forces in England and Wales.
We found that the force understands the outcomes of crime. Effective oversight of these is provided by performance meetings, including the Quality of Investigations Board. The force also carries out thorough audits of its investigations. This allows senior leaders to understand what leads to better outcomes and what improvements might be needed to give victims better justice. The force has been improving the quality of its investigations through training and additional support for investigators and supervisors.
The number of offenders charged with offences across England and Wales has been decreasing for a notable period of time. Despite having a higher percentage of positive outcomes than some forces, the proportion of cases where Staffordshire Police achieves a good outcome for the victim remains low. The force must continue to improve its outcomes in order to support and protect victims, and bring offenders to justice.
The force doesn’t always close crimes with the appropriate outcome type. During our inspection, we found it had applied the correct outcome in only 55 of the 85 relevant cases we reviewed.
We also found that the force has a backlog of crimes that still need to have an outcome assigned to them. The force has been clearing this backlog by using staff from its crime bureau to review and close crimes and assign outcomes.
This process means that correct outcomes are assigned. But the force should make sure it continues to reduce the backlog so it has a more complete understanding of the outcomes of crime, and to remove finalised crimes from investigators’ workloads.
The crime bureau also makes sure that all crime reports are assigned the correct outcome, not just those in the backlog. The force told us that compliance rates have improved since this work began earlier in 2024.
The correct application of outcomes is essential for effective performance monitoring. If the force incorrectly applies outcomes, then it cannot understand what contributes to certain outcomes, such as victims declining to support prosecution or suspects not being identified. This could undermine its progress in achieving better results for victims.
During our inspection, we spoke to investigators and reviewed their investigations. We found that the force has clear standards for how investigations should be carried out and supervised, and that supervisors often provide effective support, which is an improvement since our last inspection. But there are still some investigations where the initial investigation plans and supervisory reviews could be better.
In our victim service assessment we found evidence of effective supervision in 69 of 90 cases, and 79 of 100 investigations were judged to be effective. We also found that all appropriate and proportionate investigative opportunities were taken in 74 of 92 cases.
Appropriate supervision is an important factor in how well forces carry out investigations. When supervision is absent or not good enough, investigations become compromised and the service to victims declines.
In this section we set out our main findings that relate to how well the force investigates crime.
The force allocates serious and complex crime to PIP 2 investigators. At the time of our inspection, the force had 307 designated PIP 2 constable posts. But the force told us it only had 127 PIP 2 constables in post, with 115 of the remaining posts being filled with constables who are only qualified to PIP 1 level, and 65 of the posts vacant. This meant that only 41 percent of its PIP 2 posts were staffed by PIP 2 investigators.
The force has clear plans to address this gap. It is creating a detective development pathway for student officers. This will raise their awareness of the role of the public protection unit and the criminal investigation department in their final year, in order to identify those who have the potential to apply for PIP 2 investigative roles.
The force will continue to accept entrants who have received training from Police Now. In March 2024, 40 student officers joined the force from Police Now, with the intention that they will progress into detective roles, either within the public protection unit or the criminal investigation department. They will achieve PIP 1 accreditation in their first year within local policing, before being deployed into their detective role in March 2025.
The force has also attracted transferees from other forces into specific posts. These join the force with fewer training requirements and, in some cases, existing knowledge and qualifications, such as PIP 2 and specialist crime. The force told us that it is planning for a further five intakes of transferees between May and November 2024, each consisting of five officers.
We found that the proportion of PIP 2 accredited officers was better among supervisory ranks:
This means that oversight of investigations is more commonly carried out by suitably skilled staff, even if the investigators themselves are still working toward accreditation.
The force’s internal auditing has found issues with the effectiveness of domestic abuse investigations. The majority of these investigations are carried out by response teams regardless of the risk level. Response teams generally aren’t PIP 2-trained and have limited time to dedicate to investigations, as their primary role is responding to incidents.
Alongside the shortfall in PIP 2-accredited officers, we found that the rape and serious sexual offences teams and the child protection teams don’t have enough officers with accreditation from the specialist sexual assault investigators development programme and the specialist child abuse investigation development programme. Insufficient training could reduce the effectiveness of investigations. The force is now accessing more training courses for these officers, and has intakes planned for later in the year.
The force has invested in a comprehensive auditing regime that helps senior leaders to understand how effectively investigations are being carried out. We were impressed at the range and depth of the auditing, which included the risk assessment at the first point of contact, the attendance at an incident or crime, the effectiveness of investigations, the frequency and quality of supervision, and the level of adherence to the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime (the Victims’ Code).
This is supported by dip sampling by investigative supervisors, and we saw evidence of this being used to identify further lines of enquiry and raise investigative standards. We also saw evidence of supervisors reviewing the work of other teams to remove the risk of positivity bias. As with other data discussed earlier in this report, the results of dip sampling and auditing are available using Power BI dashboards, making it easy for any user to understand how effectively investigations are being carried out.
This does create an additional layer of bureaucracy, as supervisors need to carry out reviews and input the results into the system. But we found that, despite the extra work this creates, most supervisors understood why it is required and appreciate the greater insight into the quality of investigations it gives them and their colleagues. We found that the force has been effective in bringing its workforce with it on the journey towards more robust performance management.
Investigative supervisors have also been provided with extra training and support. The force has provided a range of investigative masterclasses and consulted with its sergeants to understand the demands on them via ‘Sergeant Sprints’.
We also received good feedback about the implementation of investigation quality sergeants. These are ten sergeants who work with local teams to improve investigative standards. They do this in a number of ways, including consulting on the progress of investigations, supporting investigators with heavy workloads, and assisting sergeants with their workloads. This allows the sergeants to dedicate more time to leading their team at scenes of crime and making sure the best evidence is secured. We found the investigation quality sergeants have been received positively by teams, and the force told us that a pilot in South Staffordshire involving some of the same elements, such as an evidential review supervisor, had a similarly positive effect on the morale of officers and staff.
The force should make sure it assesses the effect of the investigation quality sergeants, but these early findings are encouraging.
The Victims’ Code sets out the minimum standard that organisations must provide to victims of crime. This includes carrying out victims needs assessments, setting out how frequently victims should be updated on the progress of investigations through the victim contract, and reflecting their views in victim personal statements.
In our 2022 inspection of the force, we noted that victim personal statements weren’t considered often enough. These give victims the opportunity to say in their own words how a crime has affected them. If the suspect of a crime is found guilty at court, the victim personal statement can be considered when deciding sentencing.
During our victim service assessment, we found that the force had improved on this issue. A victim personal statement was considered in 26 of 32 relevant cases we reviewed.
In our 2022 inspection, we noted that the force should improve how often it records an auditable record of victims’ decisions and their reasons for withdrawing their support. In this inspection, in our victim service assessment we found that this had improved. Reasons for withdrawing support were recorded in 8 of 10 relevant cases.
The force also complies with other aspects of the Victims’ Code. We found that it consistently updates victims of crime about the progress of investigations. The frequency and method by which victims are updated is outlined in the victim contract. In our victim service assessment we found that the agreed victim contract was followed in 62 of 69 relevant cases.
In our 2022 inspection, we said that the force needed to be more efficient at retrieving digital evidence from mobile phones, computers and other electronic devices to make sure investigations aren’t delayed.
During this inspection, we found that the force has made progress on this issue. Our victim service assessment found no examples of unjustified delays due to digital forensics or digital examinations. The force has reduced its digital forensics backlog, and has introduced two ‘digi-vans’. These are mobile units that can visit the scenes of incidents and examine devices in order to determine whether a full examination is necessary. This helps divert unnecessary submissions that might otherwise contribute to a backlog.
However, we did find that officers and staff frequently mentioned delays in receiving evidence back from digital device submissions. And they told us that there aren’t enough digital analysis kiosks for officers and staff to examine devices in police stations before submitting them for analysis.
The force is aware of this. It has a digital forensics programme board which meets to discuss and address these issues. This board is also examining ways to improve the IT infrastructure in order to develop the service further.
Staffordshire Police requires improvement at protecting vulnerable people.
During our last inspection, we advised that the force should collect victim feedback and use this information to improve its services.
During this inspection, we did find some examples of this being done, such as trainers using a video of a member of public describing their experience of being arrested and detained in training courses. We also observed vulnerability training that including victims giving accounts of their experiences to police attendees. And we found that some victim feedback is obtained from third sector colleagues such as independent domestic violence advisors and independent sexual violence advisors. But formal and routine collection of victim feedback is limited.
The force has recently reintroduced surveys of domestic abuse victims. But it should make sure it collates feedback from a range of sources, analyses it, and uses it to guide the direction of service improvements.
The force should increase its consideration and use of preventative orders, such as Domestic Violence Protection Notices (DVPNs) and Domestic Violence Protection Orders (DVPOs). And it should create systems to monitor and prioritise breaches of these orders to better safeguard vulnerable people.
In the year ending 30 September 2023, Staffordshire Police recorded 4,156 stalking offences, which equated to 3.6 stalking offences per 1,000 population. Despite this, in the same period the force only applied at court for one full Stalking Protection Order (SPO) and four interim SPOs.
The force told us that there was only a single sexual risk order in place at the time of our inspection. This is a civil order that can be applied to an individual who hasn’t been convicted or cautioned for a sexual offence but may pose a risk of harm.
We did observe the force making use of DVPNs and DVPOs. These provide protection to victims by putting into place protective measures immediately after a domestic violence-related incident, often when there isn’t enough evidence to charge a perpetrator or to provide protection using bail conditions.
In the year ending 30 September 2023, Staffordshire Police made DVPO applications in 0.7 percent of recorded domestic abuse-related crimes. While this figure is within the typical range for forces in England and Wales, it is below the average across forces in England and Wales (of 1.4 percent). But in our victim service assessment, we found that orders such as DVPNs, DVPOs, and SPOs were considered in only 8 of the 13 relevant cases we reviewed. And some officers we spoke to told us they were uncertain about the value of DVPNs and DVPOs, or the process for applying for them.
The force could also do more to monitor whether offenders are complying with orders. We found evidence of response officers being given responsibility for monitoring compliance for DVPNs and DVPOs, with support from the force’s harm reduction hubs. But this wasn’t consistent across all the locations we visited.
The force should make sure it uses the full range of powers available to it to protect victims. And it needs to have oversight of whether offenders comply with the conditions placed upon them.
In this section we set out our main findings that relate to how well the force protects vulnerable people.
The force regularly audits the effectiveness of its response to incidents and the quality of its investigations. In September 2023, the force carried out an audit of a large number of incidents and crimes, and found issues with the quality of attendance and investigation of domestic abuse-related incidents in particular.
Following these findings, the force carried out an in-depth review of this area, which it called Operation Dare. This reviewed over 3,000 domestic abuse-related incidents and investigations. It found a number of issues with the force’s approach to domestic abuse.
While the average time to attend all grade 2 incidents was 11 hours, the average attendance time for grade 2 domestic abuse-related incidents was 22 hours. And in 41 percent of those incidents, it took more than seven days for callers to receive a response. Only 8 percent of these incidents were attended within 4 hours. Delays in attending incidents or receiving a full account of risk to the victim could result in victims not being effectively safeguarded, and important information regarding the risk to victims not being identified and shared with partner organisations.
In Operation Dare, the force also found that approximately 38 percent of victims of domestic abuse declined to complete a DASH risk assessment. And it found that officers were routinely failing to activate BWV at domestic abuse-related incidents, despite the force’s policy requiring them to do so. Supervisors were also failing to detect and enforce this issue. This could lead to the loss of important evidence that could support an evidence-led prosecution if the victim declines to co-operate with an investigation.
The force did find examples of attendance and investigation of domestic abuse-related incidents being handled well, and fed this back to the officers involved. But overall, these findings indicate issues with the force’s approach to domestic abuse.
The force has communicated these findings to its officers, and reports some initial improvement. The proportion of victims who refused a DASH risk assessment across the force area dropped from 38 percent in September 2023–January 2024 to 31 percent in January–February 2024. This reduction suggests that the issue may have been with how officers were engaging with victims.
The force has implemented a seven-step plan to improve its response to domestic abuse from initial attendance to the end of an investigation. Despite the relatively recent adoption of this plan, we found that officers are aware of these steps and how and why they need to follow them.
The force should continue to improve how it deals with domestic abuse-related incidents and crimes, to make sure that victims receive a good level of service and are appropriately safeguarded.
In our last inspection, we identified that the force lacked a performance framework to help understand its capacity and capability for addressing vulnerability. We also found that the force needed to improve its strategy and governance regarding the protection of vulnerable people.
During this inspection, we found that the force has reorganised its public protection staff into a single unit. And it employed external consultants to help understand how to meet its demand in this important area, who found that the force needs to add 100 new posts. The force is actively recruiting both internally and externally to meet this target.
Crucially, the force now has greater access to and makes better use of performance data to understand how effective it is at meeting demand in public protection and safeguarding. The force’s public protection command board has oversight of this data. It collates information on issues including workloads, investigative outcomes, how large the backlogs of safeguarding referrals are and how long they take to process, the amount and timeliness of disclosures prompted by the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme, and staff absence and sickness. When we observed this meeting, the force was still developing its understanding of the main challenges for the public protection unit and for staff well-being. But it is clear the force has made progress since our last inspection.
We also saw good examples of data being used by the force’s domestic abuse governance board and child protection governance board to track emerging themes and address areas for improvement. We also saw improvements the force has made since our child protection inspection revisit in March 2023, particularly with regard to submitting public protection notices for children more promptly and recording the voice of the child in risk assessments.
The force is also examining its wider governance structures for tackling the strands of vulnerability identified in the National Vulnerability Action Plan. It has changed its approach so the actions identified in the plan fall under its own annual delivery plans. This means that the force will have better oversight over its work to address vulnerability.
During our inspection, we found the force has improved how promptly it researches the risk of harm posed to and by people for public protection notices and risk assessments. In our initial visit to the force’s MASH, we found that the information gathered and shared with partners was comprehensive. But we also found that referrals to partner services for standard and medium risk adult cases aren’t always timely, and that the reduction in the backlog was largely managed by using overtime. We also found that the process to understand and triage risk varied across different local authority areas.
When we returned to the MASH later in the inspection, we found that the backlog had significantly reduced and that the daily number of cases was being effectively managed. The MASH processes for grading referrals makes sure that risk assessments and referrals happen in a timely manner. We found minimal delays in sharing information with partners and in attending strategy discussions. And the process to understand and triage risk is now consistent across the force area.
We saw effective links between the MASH and the harm reduction hubs, which are locally based teams whose duties include helping to identify risk and making sure information is shared with partners. We also saw that MASH and harm reduction hub staff were trained and supported effectively. And we found that MASH managers have access to good performance data, and dip sample cases to understand how the work is currently being carried out and make improvements.
We are reassured the force is investing in maintaining this level of service, including recruiting an additional eight sergeants.
Multi-agency risk assessment conferences (MARACs) are meetings where representatives from statutory and voluntary agencies share information about people at high risk of domestic abuse.
During our inspection, we observed five of the force’s MARACs. We saw good representation from a range of services, including mental health services, housing, children’s social care, and independent domestic violence advisors.
We found that police attendees at the MARAC contributed effectively to the meetings, and suggested appropriate and wide-ranging actions to reduce risk. These included using the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme to alert victims to risk, using protective orders such as non-molestation orders, and providing text safe devices, which allow victims to safely access advice and support.
We also found that actions designed to manage the risk posed by perpetrators were considered, including voluntary programmes to address the perpetrator’s behaviour.
The force has ten harm reduction hubs placed in local policing areas. These are teams of officers that support the local response to vulnerability. Ways they do this include assessing the quality of all DASH risk assessments, reviewing whether domestic cases should be sent to MARAC, providing local knowledge of victims and offenders to the MARAC, and supporting officers with advice on attending incidents and safeguarding victims.
We found that officers highly value the support harm reduction hubs provide to improve safeguarding for victims. We were given good examples of how the advice from harm reduction hubs supported officers and victims. These included examples of hub staff obtaining statements from victims who initially declined to be involved with investigations, providing preventative advice to victims following an arson attack, and identifying trends in antisocial behaviour and other issues.
Staffordshire Police is adequate at managing offenders and suspects.
We found that the force’s decisions about whether to impose bail on offenders suspected of accessing indecent images of children, and what conditions to place on them, are made with a sound rationale. These decisions consider both the risk to potential victims and the safeguarding of suspects themselves. The force sends details of bail conditions to children’s social care and to family members who are protecting any children involved.
But the force doesn’t routinely monitor compliance with the conditions of bail or protective orders for those offenders. Details of the suspects and their conditions aren’t routinely recorded on Niche, the force’s crime management system. This limits how much other officers and staff can know about the risk these suspects pose if they encounter them at other incidents, or the specific restrictions they are under.
The force should make sure it has oversight of non-compliance with the conditions of bail and protective orders.
In this section we set out our main findings that relate to how well the force manages offenders and suspects.
In our last inspection we found that the force wasn’t dealing effectively with wanted suspects and didn’t have oversight of all wanted persons. The force now has access to that data. And, importantly, it now has a clear suspect management policy which divides suspects into categories based on the level of risk they present. The force uses this data to understand how many suspects there are and what risk they pose, and it targets its enforcement action accordingly. High-risk suspects are discussed and tracked in daily management meetings, and supervisors are aware of any outstanding suspects linked to their team’s investigations.
The policy for how suspects are allocated a risk category has only recently been adopted, and we found that not all officers are aware of its specific details. And the force still has work to do to make sure suspects are interviewed or arrested where appropriate. In our victim service assessment we found that this happened in only 30 of the 48 cases we examined. But we also found that suspects are arrested at the earliest opportunity, and the force does have a positive arrest policy for domestic abuse which is understood by officers.
In our last inspection, we identified several issues with how the force monitored registered sex offenders in its management of sexual or violent offender (MOSOVO) team. Issues included the lack of a structured process to monitor overdue home visits and risk assessments, and the need to increase the quality of supervisory reviews.
In our recent inspection, we found improvements in all of these issues. The force now has a better understanding of the performance of its MOSOVO team. Supervisors are knowledgeable and are able to use performance data to monitor whether any visits or risk management plans are overdue. We found examples where risk assessments or visits began to fall behind, and supervisors were able to step in and provide support to make sure timescales were adhered to. This oversight extends to senior managers, who have a detailed understanding of the work of the team, and provide accurate assessments to senior force performance meetings.
We found better supervision of risk management plans and much lower backlogs in visits to registered sex offenders. The risk management plans we viewed were of good quality. The force complies with authorised professional practice around carrying out visits with at least two officers and reactive management.
We did find that some offender managers still have high workloads, but this was in part due to unexpected absences.
We also found that not all low-level breaches of notification requirements are being recorded. This might include apparently innocuous breaches of conditions placed on a registered sex offender, such as failing to register a change of bank card. But failing to record these breaches could mean that a pattern of non-compliance is missed. And it means the force isn’t adhering to the national crime recording standard.
We carried out a national child protection inspection at the force in 2022, following which we made recommendations regarding child protection. We revisited the force in March 2023 in a post-inspection review, in which we already observed a number of the improvements found during our latest inspection. As such, we are reassured that these positive changes have been sustained over time.
In our last inspection, we identified several issues with how the force was managing the risk posed by offenders who had accessed indecent images of children. The force’s police online investigation team had large backlogs in dealing with suspects, which left children at risk and had a significant effect on staff well-being. The force also lacked an intelligence review process to check whether circumstances such as a suspect’s access to children changed over the time it took for their case to be dealt with.
When we scrutinised the police online investigation team during this inspection, we found that it has much better working practices. It makes effective use of the Kent internet risk assessment tool to identify the risk posed by offenders and target enforcement appropriately. The team has increased in size and there are far fewer delays in dealing with suspects. While officers’ workloads are still demanding, equating to approximately 15–20 suspects each, they told us that their working environment has improved and they receive enhanced welfare support.
Most importantly, the force proactively shares information with children’s social care at the earliest point a child is identified. This makes sure that children are better protected. And the force collects data on how many children are safeguarded so it can understand the effect of this important work.
Again, we observed a number of these improvements in our earlier post-inspection review, so we can be reassured that these positive changes have been sustained over time.
We found the force is effective at monitoring peer-to-peer file‑sharing systems to identify illegal file-sharing of indecent images of children, and routinely uploads images to the Child Abuse Image Database. It also makes good use of digital triage using its two ‘digi-vans’. The force told us that approximately 50 percent of devices were triaged at the scene rather than needing to be submitted to the digital forensics unit.
We did find that the team doesn’t consistently use warrants to gain entry and secure evidence. More often it uses the powers granted by arresting suspects at the scene. But this relies on suspects being present when officers attend an address. If they aren’t, they may become aware that they have been identified as a suspect and take steps to discard or destroy evidence. The force should make sure that the most effective methods of detaining suspects and securing evidence are used as a standard.
The force has also improved its oversight of bail. In our previous inspection we found that force-level oversight of the use of bail and released under investigation (RUI) could be improved. During this inspection we found that the force now has access to that level of information and can report on how frequently bail is used, when RUI is used instead, and when and why bail is replaced with RUI.
The force has dedicated bail management sergeants who check that officers correctly update bail statuses and that procedures for people returning on bail are correctly applied. They also make sure that procedures for changing from bail to RUI are correctly carried out, rather than the bail status being allowed to lapse through inaction or poor suspect management. The dedicated sergeants also identify any areas for improvement and provide information to officers. For example, a short briefing on the use of bail in child protection cases was produced after children’s social care raised concerns about the lack of protective conditions being applied to parents who have been bailed for offences against their children.
We also found that officers across commands appreciate the use of bail to safeguard victims, and understand the force’s preference for using bail when appropriate.
Staffordshire Police is adequate at building, supporting and protecting the workforce.
During our inspection, recently recruited officers told us that they felt welcomed when they first joined the force. In our PEEL workforce survey, 88.3 percent of respondents who were new recruits (196 of 222) felt their line manager nurtured an environment of trust and confidence.
However, we were also told that the force doesn’t have enough tutors with sufficient experience and training to meet the demand. The force told us that it has the highest percentage of student officers nationally. Some tutors have to carry out back-to-back tutoring sessions. Tutors didn’t always feel well supported, and felt there was a lack of central co-ordination of the demand they were dealing with. We were also told that inexperienced officers were being accredited as tutors, and that some officers were persuaded to become tutors as a condition for receiving a driving course or other training.
We were also told of an example when a new recruit witnessed inappropriate behaviour by a tutor which wasn’t effectively dealt with. In our PEEL workforce survey, 10.1 percent of respondents (75 of 742) felt they had been bullied or harassed while in work. Out of 42 respondents who reported bullying or harassment, either formally or informally, 21 told us that no action had been taken.
The force does keep track of all reporting of inappropriate behaviour and staff grievances, and has clear processes in place to deal with these. The incidents we were told about may only represent a minority of experiences, but the force should reassure itself that students and tutors are sufficiently supported to deal with any incidents of this type.
In this section we set out our main findings that relate to how well the force builds, supports and protects the workforce.
The force currently offers exit interviews and leavers’ questionnaires to officers and staff. Leavers are also given the option to fill out a questionnaire covering details of why they made the choice to leave. One example of this was a specific questionnaire created for the criminal justice department which identified the need for improved supervision in the unit. Feedback from these processes is collated and fed back to local commanders.
The force also uses its Say to Stay programme to retain officers and staff who have expressed a desire to leave. It can offer adjustments to individuals, such as considering a move to a different team or location.
The force has recognised that officers who are early in their career often face challenges in their expectations of the role and in work-life balance. The ‘Step In’ process makes sure that new officers are aware of the challenges of the role, and outlines the support they should receive from tutors, supervisors, and mentors. This process was implemented following issues such as nine officers in the first intake of the Police Uplift Programme leaving after public and personal safety training. The force also provides support meetings for students struggling with the balance between operational policing and university work.
In our last inspection, many officers and staff told us that their workloads were unmanageable and that they had a poor work-life balance. In our current inspection, we found that this situation has improved. Few officers or staff reported the same issues. In our PEEL workforce survey, 72.5 percent of all respondents (542 of 748) agreed they could achieve a good work-life balance. However, the figure for police officers specifically was lower, with only 56.8 percent agreeing they could achieve a good work-life balance (167 of 294 respondents). The force should continue to monitor and address this issue.
The force provides a range of preventative and reactive welfare support options to staff and officers. These include themed well-being days, a ‘well-being bus’ that travels the force area (prioritising teams and locations with high workloads or levels of stress), mental health first aiders, and mental health awareness courses.
The force identifies departments and roles that carry a high risk to the well-being of officers and staff, such as child exploitation, digital forensics and the MASH. Most members of the workforce in high-risk roles told us they felt well supported. This support includes regular one-to-one meetings to discuss well-being and the availability of resilience training, psychological screening and counselling.
The force offers support to officers who have been assaulted. Officers we spoke to gave us examples of effective support given to them following assaults, including contact from the chief constable. The force has a seven-step plan that supervisors can use to tailor support for an officer who has been assaulted.
The workforce also has access to trauma risk management. We found some positive examples where officers and staff had been given the time to access this, but we also heard about situations where officers didn’t feel they had enough time to do so. The service was described at one point as a ‘postcode lottery’, with the quality of the service being dependent on your location.
In our PEEL workforce survey, only 37.1 percent of police and student officers who responded (109 of 294) agreed that time was prioritised for debriefing and decompression. The force should make sure that officers and staff who experience traumatic incidents are given the time to effectively debrief, decompress and access support.
The force’s occupational health unit provides support for officers affected by physical or mental health issues. It also aims to prevent work-related illness and injury. At the time of our inspection, the unit was fully staffed and, having achieved the foundation standards, was working towards improving and advancing standards.
We found the unit has access to sufficient data to assess the well-being of the workforce. While the force has no specific occupational health strategy, the occupational health unit features in the well-being and people strategies, and oversight is provided by the well-being steering group and the enabling services board.
We received mixed opinions from the workforce about the service offered by the unit. Some officers told us the service provided was insufficient or that it took too long for them to receive treatment or support after being referred. But we also heard more positive assessments of the unit’s performance, including examples of counselling being promptly arranged, and support for officers feeling stress from financial pressure.
In the year ending 30 September 2023, the average time from referral to appointment was 18.4 days.
The force provides leadership training for its sergeants and staff equivalents in the form of two specific programmes. The inspired leadership programme covers leadership and coaching, effective communication, handling conflict, leading people, and other aspects of leadership common to any leadership role. It is aligned with the new College of Policing curriculum. The sergeants’ development course, targeted at police sergeants in particular, contains modules on operational matters such as scene management, fatal collision investigations and file quality.
The force also offers this training to officers who aspire to be sergeants. At the time of our inspection, the most recent leadership training course had 32 attendees, 11 of whom were aspiring sergeants rather than those already in a sergeant role. The force has seen some indicators of success in training aspiring sergeants early. It told us that in October 2023 it had a 73 percent pass rate for the sergeants’ exam, which it said compared favourably with other forces across England and Wales.
However, in our inspection we found mixed evidence of attendance at these courses. We spoke to supervisors of various lengths of service who told us they had been offered a training course, but we also found some who hadn’t yet received such an offer.
The force has confirmed that 94 sergeants have attended the sergeant’s development course (29 percent of all sergeants), while the inspiring leadership programme has been attended by 246 staff supervisors (39 percent of all staff first-line supervisors) and 67 sergeants (20 percent of all sergeants).
The force should make sure it continues to develop its first-line leaders and should increase the proportion that receive this important training.
The force has access to full lists (matrices) of the skills and accreditations held by staff in the different areas of its workforce. These allow the force to determine which areas need to be developed.
We saw evidence of these areas being identified in the force’s training panel meeting, and requests for additional training for staff being considered as a result. Recent examples of this process working successfully have been the wider adoption of problem-solving training for neighbourhood policing staff, and the targeting of PIP 2 training at staff in the public protection unit. We also saw evidence of the training panel using information from professional development reviews (PDRs) to determine training needs. The force also uses information from the matrices to inform its overall workforce planning, and to understand what learning and development or recruitment activity it may need to carry out to fill gaps in skills.
We did find that some of the skills matrices were still under development, such as the matrix for the public protection unit. And the force is developing its IT infrastructure in this area. Information about skills and accreditations are currently split across two systems. The force is planning an upgrade to allow the systems to more meaningfully interact and to automate some of the work required to audit skills and identify areas for development.
The force previously had issues with training being cancelled due to staffing levels being too low to allow staff to take time away from their jobs. We found during our inspection that this had improved and that staffing levels and other similar issues were considered when training was scheduled.
The force tracks attendance and compliance with training, including online or distance training, and was able to provide that data upon request. In our PEEL workforce survey we found that 78.4 percent of respondents (587 of 748) agreed that Staffordshire Police equipped them with sufficient training, and 76.4 percent of respondents (571 of 748) said Staffordshire Police considered their skills and capabilities when deploying them into a specific role or location.
Since our last inspection, the force has refreshed its PDR process and attempted to make PDRs feel more valuable to those completing them.
The force reported to us that its recent data suggests a 100 percent completion rate of PDRs. However, the force does have some issues with how its automated system reports on PDRs, and the force’s auditing suggests completion is lower. Nonetheless, in our PEEL workforce survey, 88.4 percent of respondents (661 of 748 respondents) said they had a PDR in last 12 months. And during our inspection we spoke to many officers and staff who had completed a PDR with their manager within that time frame.
We have seen evidence that the force uses information from PDRs to understand the skills of its workforce and identify training needs. We were also told about examples of officers and staff having useful PDR discussions that considered their development in both the short and long term.
In our PEEL workforce survey, we found that 67.9 percent of respondents who had completed a PDR in the last 12 months (449 of 661) valued the process. But the force still has work to do to make sure PDRs are seen as effective. Only 56.6 percent of respondents who completed a PDR (374 of 661) agreed that it was an effective tool in their development. Nonetheless, the force has developed a PDR process that is widely used. It should now work to make sure it is a useful tool for all members of the workforce.
The force has a dedicated equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) team. This offers a range of programmes with the aim of building a diverse and representative workforce where officers and staff – particularly those in under-represented groups – feel supported.
This includes the ELEVATE programme, which is a mentoring scheme for Black officers and staff that the force is piloting. This 12-month cross-force mentoring programme allows Black officers and staff to enter a mentoring relationship with officers and staff from the Metropolitan Police Service, West Midlands Police or Staffordshire Police. The force has told us it currently has four staff currently signed up to this scheme, which went live in June 2024.
The force also has access to PushFar, a mentoring platform provided by the College of Policing that matches staff across ten other forces. This is also a pilot, and was being used by 26 officers and staff in the force at the time of our inspection.
The force provides support to applicants from under-represented groups at early stages of their career via STEP-IN support sessions, and to applicants pursuing promotion via NEXT-STEP support sessions.
The EDI team also provides more direct assistance, such as helping with ‘reasonable adjustment passports’ for officers and staff with disabilities, making sure adjustments are available for candidates during interviews and assessments, and supporting with dyslexia assessments.
We found examples of this support taking place. One officer told us that in her most recent PDR she had been encouraged to apply for the ‘direct promotion to inspector’ pathway. She was also directed to, and had spoken to, the force lead responsible for promoting and supporting advancement of women in leadership roles. We also saw information about the various services offered on the force intranet.
We observed clear support for EDI at a senior level. The force has an EDI strategy and positive action plan overseen by a diversity inclusion board that is chaired by a senior officer. Officers and staff told us that the chief constable and chief officer group were very supportive of EDI. And every PDR for the ranks of chief inspector and above includes an objective relating to diversity and inclusion.
But despite this support, officers and staff told us that examples of specific and positive change weren’t always evident, and it wasn’t always clear where or how valuable information around promotion opportunities or EDI support was available.
We also found that the force doesn’t have a specific network to support neurodivergent officers and staff. A small number of officers and staff told us about negative experiences relating to lack of knowledge or skills around neurodivergence issues.
The force should make sure that its aims regarding EDI result in tangible changes for its workforce.
Staffordshire Police’s leadership and management is adequate.
The force should make sure it is effective at managing demand and can show that it has the right resources, processes and plans in place to meet that demand.
In our inspection we found that the force has increased its understanding of its performance, and of the demand that performance needs to meet. But we found that the current operating model has created an uneven mix of capability and capacity within the county and city local policing teams.
The force is using inexperienced officers to investigate high-risk and complex crimes for which they may not be sufficiently trained or experienced. The force’s crime allocation policy, which it calls its ‘crime continuum’, allocates investigations to either response teams or the criminal investigations department depending on how complex the investigation is expected to be.
This means that some crimes whose high level of risk or complexity only becomes clear during the investigation remain with response teams, who are mostly trained only to professionalising investigations programme level 1. This includes the majority of high-risk domestic abuse crimes. The force is aware of this issue, and planned to make sure that at least 70 percent of its response officers were non-student officers. But due to success in recruiting new officers, 70 percent of response policing teams are currently students, and hence in their first three years of service. They are also frequently taken away from their frontline duties to carry out their university work. But we noted that the force has worked with its academic partners to reduce the amount of university work that requires students being taken away from frontline duties.
The force should review its current operating model and the skills of its staff to make sure the right number of people with the right skills are dealing with the right work. At the time of our inspection, it had already begun that review process. We will continue to monitor the development of the operating model in our continuous assessment of the force.
The force is currently spending around £0.5 million a month in overtime. It has underspent its 2023/24 resource budget, saving nearly £1 million, but this was possible because the force has so many vacancies. It wouldn’t have been able to save this money if it was fully staffed as per its operating model.
The force has made efforts to understand the cause of this overtime spending, but it needs to do more to improve its understanding. While overtime can be necessary to deal with unexpected or exceptional circumstances, this spending on overtime isn’t sustainable in the longer term, and wouldn’t be affordable if the force was fully staffed. And while we did find that most staff we spoke to weren’t working discretionary hours against their wishes, the force still needs to consider the effect on staff welfare. The PEEL workforce survey showed that 81.9 percent of police and student officers believed that overtime is used to manage routine demand.
In this section we set out our main findings that relate to leadership and management.
The force’s strategic vision is expressed in a ‘plan on a page’. It has four ‘pillars’:
But we found that frontline officers’ understanding of the vision was limited.
The force works well with communities, both independently and in conjunction with the Office of the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, to understand their needs and communicate the force’s priorities.
The force has improved its governance structure and introduced new executive meetings to better monitor performance, well-being, resourcing and programs of work. This is supported by a clear planning cycle. Requests for funding are made to strategic governance boards who scrutinise them against the force’s priorities to make sure they are relevant and aligned to strategic planning. The force has introduced some new elements to its operational planning, such as priority-based budgeting.
The force has made considerable progress in collecting and disseminating data about performance. We saw this both in strategic governance meetings and in the way frontline staff were able to focus their efforts to prevent and detect crime and to reduce vulnerability. The force is part of the Staffordshire Centre for Data Analytics, a collaboration between the force, Staffordshire County Council and Keele University which is partnered with a wide range of statutory and non-statutory agencies. Data is shared between agencies to tackle issues such as serious violence and offender management.
This is positive, but there are still some gaps in the force’s data, and we are aware that officers and staff have requested several new ways that the data could be used. The force should continue its efforts to make sure its data is accurate and accessible to its own staff.
The force’s leadership team are almost entirely new in post since our last inspection. They encourage challenge and debate from staff, and generally work well with senior and middle managers, who understand their roles and how they contribute to the force’s response to its priorities.
The presence of senior officers at daily ‘pacesetter’ meetings is encouraging and positive. Many frontline officers and staff we spoke to were positive about their senior leaders and their approach to performance management.
The visibility of senior officers to the rest of the force has improved since our last inspection. But there is still work to do – some officers and staff told us that senior officers could do more to be visible and communicate with the general workforce. And some officers and staff told us that they felt the force’s approach to consulting the workforce was superficial, and that it felt as though decisions had already been made before the consultations. Results from our PEEL workforce survey showed that only 57.4 percent of respondents (429 of 748) felt confident in the force’s feedback processes, and only 53.3 percent (399 of 748) were confident their ideas or suggestions would be listened to.
We found that the force makes good use of a skills matrix to understand the capacity and capability of its staff. It has a new workforce resource meeting to monitor staff development, training gaps and sickness management. And it is investing in its sergeants as frontline leaders through training and development.
The force collaborates well with Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service in both its estate and fleet services, and has shared systems which allow both organisations to make savings and reduce costs in these areas. We found that officers were satisfied with the fleet service in particular, and told us that vehicle provision has improved compared to previous years.
The force also shares other support functions with the service, such as some elements of finance and HR, which also saves both organisations money.
The force is investing in IT and understands the benefits this investment will bring. Its current IT provision is adequate and has improved from our last inspection, though some of its systems are out of date and it has some network connectivity issues. The force makes use of the outputs that the current systems are able to produce, but further investment in IT and estate infrastructure is required to be more efficient and productive.
The force has an effective approach to financial management and its plans are prudent. In the year ending 31 March 2023, the force received a total of £247 million in funding, equivalent to £215,342 per 1,000 population. Its council tax precept is £89 million, which is 36.1 percent of its total funding. The force is funded at a normal rate when compared to all forces in England and Wales.
In terms of Staffordshire Police’s financial health, its general (contingency) reserves currently stand at £9.7 million. This is a prudent amount. Its mid-term financial plan and its reserve strategy are detailed and well presented. The financial forecasts in its mid-term financial plan are based on realistic assumptions about future funding and expenditure. The force’s financial governance is linked effectively to its strategic priorities.
Data in this report comes from a range of sources, including:
For any charts and tables included in this report, we have listed the data source underneath.
We collect data from police forces twice a year. We agreed the design and schedule of this data collection with forces and other interested parties, including the Home Office.
Our analysts check and evaluate the collected data. We contact the force if we have any initial queries. Following this, we carry out an in-depth data review and make further contact with the force if needed. This process gives forces several opportunities to quality assure and validate the information they shared to make sure it is accurate.
We then share our analysis with the force by uploading the data to online dashboards. As they can review own and other forces’ data in context, forces can identify any notable differences or other inconsistencies.
This report presents the results from a PEEL inspection of one of the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales. British Transport Police is outside the scope of this report.
Any aggregated totals for England and Wales exclude data from the British Transport Police, which means that the totals will differ from those published by the Home Office. If any other police forces didn’t supply data and aren’t included in the total figures, we will mention this.
We use data that has been collected outside our PEEL inspection to support our fieldwork.
This report contains the latest data available before the start of our inspection and the data that the force gave us during our inspection. If more recent data becomes available after our inspection fieldwork and shows that the force’s performance has changed, we will comment on this.
In this report, we sometimes present information as rates per 1,000 population in each police force area. This allows our data to be comparable across all forces. Where population data is used in our calculations, we use the latest mid-year population estimates from the Office for National Statistics.
In this report, we have included bar charts with dotted red lines to show where a force is significantly different from the average for forces in England and Wales.
The dotted lines on the bar charts show one standard deviation above and below the unweighted average of all forces. Standard deviation summarises the difference between each individual value and the average and can be used to identify extreme or rare values.
Forces that are more than one standard deviation above or below the average are considered significantly different. These forces are outside the red dotted lines on our bar charts and we have highlighted them in either a dark blue (forces above average) or light blue (forces below average) colour. Typically, 32 percent of forces will be above or below these lines for any given measure.
We survey the police workforce throughout England and Wales to understand their experiences at work. The survey is an opportunity for the whole workforce to share their views with us. It is a valuable source of information as it isn’t possible to speak to everyone in a force during our inspection.
However, the responses we receive come from a non-statistical, voluntary sample within the workforce. The number of responses also varies between forces. This means that the results may be not representative of the workforce population.
We treat the results with caution and don’t use them to assess police forces. Instead, we use the results to establish themes that should be explored further during our inspection fieldwork. The results can also be used to give more evidence and validate information from other sources.
We carry out a victim service assessment for all forces as part of our inspection programme.
We assess the service that a force provides to victims. This is from the point of reporting a crime and throughout an investigation.
We also evaluate how forces record crimes. We assess every force on its crime recording practices at least once every three years.
Details of the technical methodology for the victim service assessment.
We carry out a stop and search audit for all forces as part of our inspection programme.
Our stop and search audits allow us to evaluate how well forces use their stop and search powers. We review how many stop and searches a force carried out under section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 or section 23 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. We analyse:
Staffordshire PEEL assessment 2023–2025
You can find more about Staffordshire Police on our dedicated force page.
The force faces high levels of officer workload with a disproportionately low headcount and relatively inexperienced workforce.
The force works across a county council, a unitary authority and eight district / borough council areas.
Staffordshire Police has made improvements, but further changes are needed
Find out more about HMICFRS’s work and other inspection areas.
Find out how well other forces have performed during their PEEL assessment.
You can view the recommendations for all forces made by HMICFRS on our Progress against recommendations page. This shows how much progress has been made on these recommendations.
