PEEL Force Inspection

PEEL Assessment 2023-25: Gloucestershire Constabulary

PEEL 2023-25 inspection findings for Gloucestershire Constabulary

HMICFRS page
2
Recommendations
1
Causes for Concern
18
Areas for Improvement
0
Completed
Applicable Forces
Gloucestershire Constabulary
Causes for Concern (1)
The constabulary needs to improve the time it takes to answer emergency and non-emergency calls The constabulary needs to improve the time it takes to answer emergency calls for service. This was identified as a cause of concern when the constabulary was last inspected in 2021. In the year ending 30 June 2023, Gloucestershire Constabulary answered 59.2 percent of its 999 calls within 10 seconds. This was lower than the standard expected of forces in England and Wales of answering 90 percent of 999 calls within 10 seconds. Failing to answer calls quickly enough can mean losing both public confidence and investigative opportunities. While we recognise that there have been improvements in answering emergency calls in July, August and September 2023, performance was still lower than the standard expected. In the year ending 30 June 2023, Gloucestershire Constabulary received 150 emergency 999 calls per 1,000 population. This was a normal value compared to other forces in England and Wales. In the year ending 31 March 2023, Gloucestershire Constabulary received 226 non-emergency 101 calls per 1,000 population. This is slightly lower than other forces in England and Wales. The constabulary’s abandonment rate – the rate at which callers hang up before their call is answered – for non-emergency calls is high. This was also identified as a cause of concern when the constabulary was last inspected in 2021. During our recent inspection we found that there has been a decline in performance. In the year ending 31 March 2023, the constabulary told us that 41.3 percent of its non-emergency 101 calls were abandoned. At the time of our last report, the rate was 32 percent over a three-year period. This rate remains higher than the 2020 national contact management strategy principles and guidance that forces without a switchboard should aim to have an abandonment rate lower than 10 percent. This means that the public still aren’t able to contact the constabulary as quickly or as easily as they should, which may leave people at risk. In this way, the constabulary doesn’t provide the public with a good enough service. ottinghamshire Avon and omerset Lincolnshire Cumbria Greater Manchester Leicestershire Cleveland Cheshire yfed Powys orfolk Humberside West orkshire Cambridgeshire outh orkshire taffordshire Thames alley Hertfordshire Essex orthamptonshire Gwent orth Wales uffolk outh Wales urrey West Midlands Warwickshire West Mercia Merseyside ussex evon and Cornwall ent orset urham orthumbria Metropolitan Police Hampshire erbyshire Wiltshire Lancashire orth orkshire Bedfordshire Gloucestershire Proportion of 999 calls answered in under 10 seconds Target 90 of calls should be answered in under 10 seconds
Open
Directed at: Gloucestershire Constabulary
Recommendations (2)
# Recommendation Directed at Status
R3.1 Make sure it can answer a greater proportion of emergency calls more quickly to provide a better service for the public. Gloucestershire Constabulary Open
R3.2 Make sure it can answer a greater proportion of non-emergency 101 calls so that caller abandonment levels are reduced and kept as low as possible. 23. Gloucestershire Constabulary Open
Areas for Improvement (18)
The constabulary has a well-established Citizens in Policing programme, so members of the community can be involved in local policing activity Gloucestershire Constabulary offers a variety of formal voluntary roles to diverse members of its community. The programme is overseen by a regular Citizens in Policing board, which is attended by representatives from several different groups. The special constabulary, over 150 police cadets (supported by 80 leaders) and over 300 police support volunteers are represented. The police support volunteers include employer-supported policing, and they have a range of supportive roles including drivers, archivists, cyber experts and role-play actors. Volunteer police community support officers, who focus on working with communities and on Neighbourhood Watch also have representatives on the board. Representatives also include work experience students: 14 students a month can experience aspects of policing they wouldn’t ordinarily see. Other groups represented include the Youth Advisory Group and the Treasure Seekers. The Youth Advisory Group is formed of young people aged 14–25 from various backgrounds across the county. They discuss their experiences with the police and offer feedback on the approachability of officers on the street and other policing issues. And having representatives from the Treasure Seekers gives adults with learning difficulties the opportunity to communicate with the public in police uniform. The Mini Police (for children aged seven to ten years) and the ride-along scheme are also represented at meetings. The ride-along scheme gives members of the public the opportunity to accompany officers on patrol. As well as the benefits of involving communities in policing activity, the financial contribution of these voluntary roles is estimated to save the constabulary up to £45,000 a year. Gloucestershire Constabulary
The constabulary needs to make sure it has enough trained personnel and resources so that it can comply with the required legislative processes and timescales of the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme The constabulary doesn’t have enough trained resources in place to meet the legislative requirements of the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme (also known as Clare’s Law). The constabulary told us that the number of applications had recently increased and this has resulted in some backlogs. At the time of our inspection, the constabulary told us there were 31 applications awaiting allocation. Nineteen of the requests had exceeded the 28-day deadline for disclosures to be made. The oldest of these requests dated back more than four months. Gloucestershire Constabulary
The constabulary should make sure any risks identified during its investigations into online child abuse are referred to appropriate agencies in a timely way We found that the constabulary’s indecent images of children team didn’t routinely submit a referral to children’s services in every case at the point when a child at risk was identified. Information-sharing requests are made when a suspect is identified, to check whether any children are associated with the suspect or their address, but this is effectively an incomplete referral. As a result, a child might be left at risk for several weeks until a full referral is made to children’s services containing all the relevant information. The constabulary began a review of this issue during our inspection period. It must make sure any risks are shared promptly with appropriate agencies so that children can be safeguarded at the earliest possible opportunity. Gloucestershire Constabulary
The constabulary should develop a consistent performance framework to help it understand and properly monitor its management of registered sex offenders The constabulary doesn’t have enough performance reporting or data collection in place within the team that manages the oversight of registered sex offenders. Although the constabulary does monitor the number of overdue visits, active risk management system risk assessments and risk management plans – including those for the highest risk cases – it cannot tell how overdue these cases are. This means that the constabulary and its leaders can’t see how much risk lies within the backlog of work and the urgency of action needed to manage that risk. The constabulary should make sure it develops a performance framework that allows a full understanding of the actions needed to be taken in managing the risk posed by registered sex offenders. Gloucestershire Constabulary
The constabulary should make sure any deviation from College of Policing authorised professional practice in how it manages registered sex offenders and reactively manages offenders is properly justified Authorised professional practice (APP) states that registered sex offenders must have been classed as low risk for three years before being moved to reactive management (meaning they are no longer subject to a formal active risk management system risk assessment). But the constabulary allows registered sex offenders who have been classed as low risk for only six months to be downgraded to reactive management. The constabulary justifies this in terms of allowing its officers and staff to focus on the more manageable number of offenders who present a higher risk. This means that registered sex offenders move into a less monitored category more quickly than academic research and best practice suggest is appropriate, and as a result the risk that they pose isn’t properly monitored. Also, the constabulary allows offenders who are subject to civil orders to enter reactive management. This means that court orders are no longer enforced. This is again contrary to the guidance within APP. The constabulary should make sure the management of registered sex offenders is only guided by the prioritisation of risk, and in accordance with APP, rather than as a way to better manage demand. Gloucestershire Constabulary
The constabulary should develop a clear policy for the management of registered sex offenders, including how and when visits take place The constabulary has no specific policy relating to the management of sexual offenders and violent offenders. Those working in this area told us they aren’t clear on how the constabulary expects home visits to offenders to take place. isits can be carried out by single officers, which isn’t consistent with authorised professional practice. In addition, officers told us such visits are often postponed if there is no specific reason for visiting. This is also not consistent with authorised professional practice, which states visits should take place to assess the current level of risk. Gloucestershire Constabulary
The constabulary needs to better understand why officers and staff, especially new recruits, want to leave The constabulary doesn’t yet have processes in place that allow it to understand fully why officers and staff decide to leave the organisation. Our PEEL workforce survey, which ran from 12 June 2023 to 28 July 2023, found just 35.2 percent of new recruits saw their future career continuing in Gloucestershire Constabulary beyond the next three years. The constabulary has refreshed its plans, meetings and processes that examine the retention of officers and staff. This includes setting up a retention board and carrying out exit interviews with leavers. But at the time of our inspection these measures weren’t developed or advanced enough to provide enough information to address retention challenges or to actively encourage people to stay. Gloucestershire Constabulary
The constabulary should improve how it manages individual performance so that it can effectively understand, monitor and prioritise its workforce’s development needs All police officers and staff should receive performance reviews (also known as professional development reviews or PDRs), These involve a series of conversations in which individuals and their line managers plan and later review their professional development over a 12-month period. The constabulary has an easily accessible PDR system in place and has taken steps to improve the number of officers and staff engaging in performance reviews. These steps include linking individual objectives to the objectives of the organisation and making sure those who apply for promotion have completed a PDR. But in the year ending 31 March 2023, only 64.6 percent of the overall workforce had completed an annual performance assessment. Our PEEL workforce survey (running from 12 June 2023 to 28 July 2023) also found that only 44.1 percent of respondents (263 of 597 respondents) had a formal PDR in the last 12 months. Of those who had a PDR in the last 12 months, only 57.0 percent (150 of 263 respondents) agreed that these were an effective tool for their development. Gloucestershire Constabulary
The constabulary should make sure its operating model and workforce plan help it to respond to current and future demand In June 2023, the constabulary introduced a new enhanced operating model. This reorganised the constabulary, particularly on the front line, and created some new teams to manage crime investigations. All posts are expected to be filled by summer 2024. But until then the constabulary is understaffed for the operating model it has chosen, which means a delay before it is fully effective. The constabulary has created two new teams to manage some of the crime investigation demand previously allocated to response officers. The desktop investigation team investigates crimes that don’t need an officer's attendance. The reactive investigation team investigates volume crimes and deals with prisoners arrested by response officers. Both teams are understaffed. The reactive investigation team is also staffed with less experienced officers – at the time our inspection ended, student officers made up 89 percent of the team. The constabulary’s response teams are also understaffed. Overtime is used to help minimum staffing levels to be reached, but this isn’t always successful. Officers aren’t responding to incidents quickly enough. They also aren’t dealing with initial investigations at crime scenes as effectively as they could. There is a shortfall of skills in some investigation teams. The constabulary allocates complex crime to inexperienced officers who don’t always have the necessary accreditation or skills, particularly in relation to complex domestic abuse cases. The constabulary should review its current operating model and the skills of its officers and staff so that the right number of people with the right skills are dealing with the right work. This will make sure the constabulary is effective at managing demand and has the right resources, processes and plans in place to meet current and future demand across the organisation. Gloucestershire Constabulary
The constabulary should do more to make the most of the productivity of its resources and assets The constabulary has discovered that officers and staff are owed 8,500 rest days in lieu, which are a result of leave being cancelled. If the constabulary has to pay officers and staff for that time – which is a possibility – it estimates this could mean an unbudgeted expenditure of approximately £2m. It also recognises that its workforce are owed an unknown amount of time off in lieu (TOIL). This is when officers and staff have worked beyond their shifts and recorded their hours to be taken back at a later date. The constabulary is using manual processes to record overtime. It has no auditable process for understanding the overall amount of TOIL, which is recorded on paper systems. The constabulary is paying overtime to its officers and using tutors and student officers to make sure it has enough resources to respond to incidents under the new operating model. It is doing this to try and reach minimum staffing levels, but this is not always successful. The constabulary needs to understand its use of overtime and the outstanding rest days and TOIL owed to its officers and staff. This will achieve a better balance between operational effectiveness and efficient resource management. Gloucestershire Constabulary
The constabulary needs to improve its productivity through digital, data and technological solutions The constabulary isn’t currently making the most effective use of the technology it has available because of limitations in its information and IT infrastructure. For example, the constabulary’s different information systems don’t always communicate with each other automatically. This can make gathering data much more challenging and time consuming because officers and staff may need to access different sources manually before any analytical work can take place. The constabulary is yet to introduce any robotics or automation across most of its systems to address this issue. Gloucestershire Constabulary
The constabulary should further develop its systems and processes to make sure problem-solving plans are stored, managed and shared effectively When we carried out our inspection, the constabulary was reviewing the way it stores and manages its problem-solving plans. The constabulary has 25 plans stored on its records management system UNIFI, which is where crimes are recorded. Gloucestershire Constabulary
The constabulary should adopt a clear policy for the reassessment of risk in relation to incidents within the force control room, and make sure that this is properly supervised and understood by the workforce The victim service assessment found evidence of effective initial risk assessments by call handlers. Structured triage and risk assessment was present in 86 of 91 applicable cases, and an accurate and meaningful record of this was found in 85 of 86 applicable cases. We found that this wasn’t always the case when the risk in incidents was reassessed in the time between a call being made and an officer being able to attend, or when the urgency of the call had changed. Since our last inspection, the constabulary has introduced a new triage team within the force control room. This team carries out initial assessments and research to identify any further offences or risks. But we also found that when the triage team regraded incidents and sent them back to the control room for a unit to be dispatched, there were sometimes delays in reassessing risk and reallocation. The constabulary needs to make sure there is a clear policy for the responsibility for, and frequency of, subsequent risk assessments and allocation. And the constabulary also needs to make sure the different teams involved in assessing risk are aware of the policy, understand it and follow it. Gloucestershire Constabulary
The constabulary doesn’t consistently achieve appropriate outcomes for victims The constabulary isn’t always achieving acceptable outcomes for victims of crime. It has low numbers of crimes that are solved following investigations. It needs to understand the issue and work to achieve better outcomes for victims. In the year ending 30 June 2023, Gloucestershire Constabulary recorded 46,076 victim-based crimes. Of these recorded offences, 7.7 percent were assigned an ‘offences brought to justice’ outcome. This was within the normal range across all forces in England and Wales. Despite being in the normal range across all forces for ‘offenders brought to justice’ outcomes, the percentage of cases where Gloucestershire Constabulary achieves a good outcome for the victim remains low. The constabulary must strive to improve this and focus on bringing offenders to justice. Between the year ending 30 June 2022 and 30 June 2023, the proportion of crimes assigned outcome 16 ‘Evidential difficulties suspect identified; victim does not support further action’ by Gloucestershire Constabulary decreased from 35.4 percent to 28.9 percent. This value is higher than expected compared to other forces in England and Wales. We found delays in the evidence review process. Files of evidence submitted by officers for internal review before being sent to the Crown Prosecution Service for them to consider authorising charges were subject to a bureaucratic and time-consuming process. The constabulary also told us that only 25 percent of these files pass this review process on the first occasion. This failure rate and the lengthy review system causes delays for the criminal justice process and for victims waiting for an outcome. Gloucestershire Constabulary
The constabulary should make sure officers and staff have the right skills and experience to carry out quality investigations We found that the reactive investigation team, which is responsible for carrying out the majority of its volume crime investigations (any crime occurring so often that it has a significant impact on the community), was staffed mainly with student officers, some of whom had been transferred to that team with only 36 weeks’ service. A plan was in place to provide these and other officers in the reactive investigation team with training to carry out their role. But the fact that this team was also understaffed meant investigations were delayed. Officers in this team, which deals with the majority of the constabulary’s domestic abuse crimes, were allocated too many crimes. One officer was found to be responsible for investigating 26 crimes, with some new crimes not actively investigated for over a month. Although numbers in the reactive investigation team are increasing as new recruits boost the overall number of officers in the constabulary, the current lack of skills and experience is adversely affecting the level of service to victims of crime. Gloucestershire Constabulary
The constabulary should make sure timely investigation plans are created where applicable, with supervisory oversight, so that all investigative opportunities are taken In our victim service assessment, we found that 54 out of 66 investigations had an investigation plan which met national standards. When an investigation plan (of any standard) was in place, the plan was followed and updated in 52 of 56 cases. During our inspection, we found evidence of backlogs and delayed supervision in investigations throughout the constabulary. We found that on one particular day there were 191 new crime investigations awaiting allocation to an investigating officer. Although most of these (102) were less than four days old, 36 were up to a week old, 44 were up to three weeks old and nine were over three weeks old. This is despite the constabulary having processes in place to help supervisors to see the outstanding crimes in their areas and to quickly allocate those requiring immediate attention. On the same day, we found a large number of crime investigations were overdue in terms of updates by the investigating officers and their supervisors, with 1,774 investigating officer updates and 2,505 updates by sergeants overdue. Gloucestershire Constabulary
The constabulary should make sure the processes for identifying, risk assessing and referring vulnerable adults and children to partner organisations are timely and result in prompt safeguarding activity The constabulary should make sure there is effective supervision of the vulnerability identification screening tool (VIST) process. VIST is a form that should be completed by officers and staff if they find any form of vulnerability that requires safeguarding, so VISTs are often completed by response officers attending incidents. Once completed, they are seen by a supervisor and submitted to the multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH). MASH staff will assess the risk and refer to relevant safeguarding partners, such as children’s or adult social care, for further assessment for support or joint investigations with police. The constabulary checks to see if VIST forms have been submitted for incidents where a vulnerability was initially recorded in the force control room. Despite this, we found that I T forms are often completed over the telephone. This doesn’t always allow a full assessment of vulnerability to be carried out, particularly when trying to identify hidden harm and the voice of the child. We found that the triage team within the force control room often submit VIST forms while carrying out initial desk-based assessments of priority-graded incidents. Although this allows for a timely submission to the MASH if a response officer is unable to attend an incident immediately, it could present an incomplete picture of the full circumstances and leave people at risk of harm. In addition, we found that VIST forms, despite being checked by supervisors, can reach the MASH with vital information missing. At one MASH meeting where VIST forms were assessed, 21 of 23 were found to have the voice of the child section left blank. The lack of consistency in recording the voice of the child means that this key insight isn’t always informing the safeguarding approach or services children need. It is a key requirement for agencies to promote the welfare of the child. The constabulary has recognised the significance of its performance in this area and has commissioned an audit of its VIST process. It should use the information and findings from this audit to improve the way it identifies and prioritises vulnerability. Gloucestershire Constabulary
The constabulary should increase its consideration and use of preventative orders and have systems to monitor and prioritise breaches of such orders to better safeguard vulnerable people When we last inspected the constabulary in 2021, we reported that the application of Domestic Violence Protection Orders (DVPOs) and Domestic Violence Protection Notices was inconsistent. These orders and notices provide protection to victims by helping police and magistrates’ courts to put in place protective measures immediately after a domestic violence incident, often when there is not enough evidence to charge a perpetrator or provide protection using bail conditions. The constabulary still needs to improve in this area. In the year ending 31 March 2023, the constabulary applied for 15 DVPOs at court. This equates to 0.02 DVPOs applied for per 1,000 population, which was lower than expected compared to other forces in England and Wales. During the same period, the constabulary recorded one DVPO breach. This was also lower than expected compared to other forces in England and Wales. The number of DVPO applications made over this time period only corresponded to 0.2 percent of reported domestic abuse related crimes. This was also lower than expected compared to other forces in England and Wales. The constabulary is taking steps to increase its use of preventative orders. These include the use of a dedicated lawyer to help with applications, consideration of notices and orders (as well as monitoring) at the daily management meeting, and internal communications to make sure preventative orders are considered for all relevant offenders in custody and in reactive investigation team investigations. Gloucestershire Constabulary