PEEL Assessment 2023-25: North Wales Police

The force needs to make sure officers accurately record use of force, including its justification. It should work to reduce the number of officer injuries and make sure body-worn video is used consistently In the year ending 31 March 2023, North Wales Police recorded 4,513 use of force incidents. This is a 62.6 percent increase compared with the previous year. But this is still 5,741 fewer than we estimate should have been recorded based on the number of arrests during this period. This may mean that the force isn’t recording all its use of force incidents. In the year ending 31 March 2023, 6.8 percent of use of force incidents resulted in the officer being injured, one of the highest rates in England and Wales. This may mean North Wales Police isn’t training officers to use force correctly or providing them with the correct level of protection. The force has introduced an officer safety panel to address this issue, but it isn’t clear what impact this has had in reducing injuries. The force needs to continue to monitor the level of officer injuries and try to reduce them. North Wales Police has improved its understanding of when officers use body-worn video to record incidents where force is used. In April 2024, it provided us with data that showed the compliance rate for the use of body-worn video when force was used was 63.5 percent. Following our inspection, the force told us that the rolling 12-month compliance rate to August 2024 was 85.7 percent. During our inspection, supervisors told us that they didn’t always review the body-worn video due to demand pressures. In May, the force introduced an electronic form for officers to record the use of both stop and search and use of force powers. Officers can select the justification for use of force from a range of options and manually add additional details. But supervisors told us that they didn’t know officers were able to add text. The force should make sure that all officers and supervisors are made aware of this function. Officers and supervisors told us that it had become confusing knowing when they should record stop and search and use of force. The force told us that the number of officers using the new electronic system was low, but it planned to phase out the use of paper forms in September. This should provide more clarity for officers and supervisors. North Wales Police

The force needs to improve its governance of pre-charge bail Bail is used by police to protect vulnerable people by imposing conditions on suspects and offenders. For example, bail conditions could restrict suspects from contacting victims or going to specified locations. This helps to prevent further crimes being committed and to safeguard vulnerable people. Pre-charge bail is initially set for three months. Police can authorise extensions for up to nine months. Court approval is required to extend pre-charge bail beyond nine months. The force’s data isn’t detailed enough to be able to see if bail is effectively managed. It lacks information on how many suspects and offenders fall into different bail periods. The force was unable to show how it monitored suspects approaching the nine-month limit. It couldn’t show us how many suspects’ and offenders’ bail, and the associated conditions, had lapsed without a further risk assessment. We found that the force didn’t examine bail in either local or force-level performance meetings. A lack of detailed performance data also makes it difficult to assess if offences are being investigated efficiently. The force has put together a business case to recruit personnel to make sure bail is more robustly managed. North Wales Police

The force should make sure that it can hold leaders at all levels to account for their performance The force is working hard to improve its culture. It is also providing thoughtful leadership training and succession planning for future leaders. But it needs to make sure its performance framework goes beyond simple metrics. We found that supervisors and managers lacked detailed knowledge of the demands on their teams, and weren’t being held to account for this lack of insight into performance. This means that leaders throughout the organisation don’t have a clear understanding of what is expected of them, so cannot act upon those expectations. We also found evidence of teams working across multiple locations or instances of lone working without regular supervision. Some response officers had high workloads and some detectives comparatively low workloads. This could suggest a lack of understanding of capacity and capability at local and therefore force leadership level. The force should improve its direction of local leadership through a clear performance framework and more robust performance management. North Wales Police

The force should make sure its operating model and workforce plan help it to respond to current and future demand The force should make sure it is effective at managing demand and can show it has the right resources, processes and plans in place to meet current demand. It has a geographical operating model that uses workforce and seasonal plans with a desired service level to try to make sure it has people in place to meet demand. The different teams that deal with crime demand don’t have enough resources. There is a mix of capability and capacity within these teams, and we saw evidence that sometimes the force is using inexperienced officers to investigate complex crime for which they aren’t trained. North Wales Police has the lowest use of overtime in England and Wales when compared to other forces. But it should review how overtime is being used to manage demand in different areas. We saw evidence that text messages were regularly sent to personnel on rest days to cover shifts where teams have dropped below their desired service level. Achieving desired service levels in some areas is creating problems in others. One example is the minimum requirement that three sergeants supervise response policing. There is also a specific requirement for the number of sergeants in custody suites. These requirements mean neighbourhood sergeants are moved from their duties to provide cover and won’t be able to provide sufficient support and leadership to their neighbourhood policing teams. Or they will be offered overtime on rest days to fill vacant shifts in custody. uring our inspection, we spoke to neighbourhood officers who hadn’t seen their supervisor for over seven days as they were covering custody sergeant duties. This made some officers feel unsupported and isolated. The force should review its operating model and the skills of its workforce to make sure the right number of people, with the right skills, are dealing with the right work. North Wales Police

The force should improve its approach to problem-solving plans and make sure that good practice is effectively shared across the organisation We observed several problem-solving meetings with local partner organisations and saw examples of effective, evidence-based problem-solving activity that had led to notable reductions in crime and antisocial behaviour. But problem-solving wasn’t being recorded consistently across the force. At the time of our inspection, the force had only ten problem-solving plans open, with most in the early stages of development. Some officers in neighbourhood policing teams hadn’t been trained in problem-solving and weren’t using the OSARA model – objective, scanning, analysis, response, assessment – or other recognised model to identify and address issues in their communities. This could limit officers’ effectiveness in tackling problems in their communities. The officers using problem-solving plans are using different recording and supervision processes. By not recording activity in a consistent manner, the force could struggle to identify, gather and share best practice across teams. This could hinder its ability to make improvements in the future. Innovative practice North Wales Police

The force should make sure that call takers give appropriate advice on preserving evidence and preventing crime The force doesn’t routinely provide callers with advice on preventing crime or preserving evidence. This means the force is potentially missing opportunities to help preserve evidence that might improve investigations and outcomes for victims. It is also missing opportunities to prevent further crimes against victims. In our victim service assessment, handlers gave appropriate advice about preserving evidence in only 19 of the 32 relevant cases we reviewed. We also found that call handlers gave appropriate advice about crime prevention in only 22 of 33 relevant cases. The force needs to improve training to make sure people who take calls are fully aware of their role in preserving evidence and preventing crime. The force should monitor calls to check the effectiveness of the training. North Wales Police

The force needs to improve how quickly it responds to incidents and make sure the caller is updated when there are delays The force doesn’t always attend calls for service in line with its published attendance times. This was an area for improvement during the last inspection and it remains an area for improvement. Innovative practice North Wales Police

The force doesn’t consistently achieve appropriate outcomes for victims The force isn’t always achieving acceptable outcomes for victims of crime. It has low numbers of crimes that are solved following investigations. The force needs to understand the issue and work to achieve better outcomes for victims of crimes. In the year ending 31 March 2024, North Wales Police recorded 113,752 victim-based crimes. Of these recorded offences, 10.5 percent were assigned an offences brought to justice outcome. This was within the normal range compared to other forces in England and Wales. This area for improvement is based on the overall performance of the force in bringing offenders to justice. North Wales Police

The force needs to make sure it complies with all the requirements of the Victims’ Code We found the force is failing to follow some requirements of the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime, also known as the ictims’ Code. The code requires forces to carry out a needs assessment at an early stage to determine whether victims need additional support. We found that the force didn’t consistently carry out this assessment. And it didn’t always record requests for additional support. We also found that appropriate victim needs assessments were recorded in only 46 of 56 relevant cases. The force only set up a contract with the victim, recommended by the ictims’ Code, in 45 of 64 cases and recorded the reason a victim failed to support an investigation in 22 of 30 cases. The force should provide enhanced support for victims who are vulnerable or intimidated or persistently targeted, and victims of the most serious crimes. Where a victim was entitled to enhanced support, this was recorded in 21 of 35 relevant cases. This means the force isn’t always identifying what support victims are entitled to. North Wales Police

The force should make sure it completes quality risk assessments for every domestic abuse-related incident, and that they reflect the needs of the victim and those connected to the victim Officers attending a domestic abuse incident must complete a Domestic Abuse, Stalking and Honour-Based Violence (DASH) risk assessment. If a victim declines to answer their questions, the officer should record their professional view of any risk that might be posed. We reviewed 246 domestic abuse-related incidents and found that in 146 (59 percent) the subject was recorded as refusing to complete the assessment, or there was no DASH score. A further review of body-worn video footage in 15 cases indicated that in some instances ASH questions weren’t asked. In nearly all the cases the officers hadn’t recorded their professional view of the risk. If officers don’t complete a DASH assessment or record their professional judgement, it makes it difficult to fully understand immediate or cumulative risk and provide appropriate safeguarding measures. We found that some officers and supervisors were unclear whether some domestic abuse incidents, for example a verbal argument, required a DASH assessment. All domestic abuse-related incidents are further reviewed by staff and officers in a central referral unit. They told us that around 50 percent of incidents have missing or incomplete information. This team has a high level of skill and experience supporting members to use their professional judgment. But this can be hampered by a lack of information from DASH assessments, especially if there is no previous history of the people involved in police systems. We immediately shared our findings with the force. It promptly provided plans to improve processes, training and oversight of its response to domestic abuse incidents. This includes further training for all frontline officers. The force should continue to address these issues and monitor progress. This will make sure it puts in place the right level of safeguarding and support to protect victims. We will be re-visiting the force to review progress in this area. North Wales Police

The force should improve its governance processes and the way it uses performance data to give a better service to vulnerable people The force has a strategy to support vulnerable people and a governance structure to oversee it. But we found it was often unclear how they guided operational priorities and improved performance. Some force action plans we reviewed seemed very detailed, but didn’t appear to be active, living documents guiding operational activity. For example, the action plan on violence against women and girls appeared to be very detailed. It had over 250 identified actions, but only 20 appeared to have key performance indicators allocated to them. The last update against an action appears to have been completed in September 2023. The force’s vulnerability action plan had actions listed, but none had been updated since October 2023. The domestic abuse policy appeared to have been last reviewed in May 2019 and referred to an out-of-date version of the All-Wales Safeguarding Procedures. At the strategic and operational meetings overseeing services for vulnerable people that we observed, the force didn’t have detailed performance data in some key areas. These included the number of domestic abuse incidents where the family had previously been discussed at multi-agency risk assessment conferences (MARACs), how often officers adequately considered the voice of the child and DASH risk assessment completion rates. When data was used, it didn’t always prompt activity to address potential issues. For example, briefing slides used in vulnerability performance meetings from February 2024 to April 2024 showed that officers appeared to not identify cumulative risk in repeat domestic abuse cases. But there was no discussion as to how to address this. Numbers of MARAC cases were presented, but there was no discussion about what the figures meant. There was no detail of repeat domestic abuse cases, nor other measures to see if MARAC was effective. Leaders of teams protecting vulnerable people told us that they weren’t routinely using performance data. Some stated the performance information they received from the force didn’t help them understand their areas and that all leaders needed to do more to hold their teams to account for their performance. Without detailed performance data and discussion, the force is unable to recognise areas of success or prioritise areas for improvement. We note that the force has made some key changes in personnel and governance, alongside planned developments in its Microsoft Power BI reporting tools. It is in an ideal position to take action to improve in this area. North Wales Police

The force needs to make sure it responds to Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme requests for information within national time frames The Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme (DVDS), also known as Clare’s Law, gives people the right to ask police if their partner has previous abusive or violent offending. People requesting information should be seen within 10 days, and any disclosure of previous offending should be made within 28 days. We found that the force didn’t hold data on how often it met the ten-day time frame. We were told it could take up to 21 days before the DVDS team has capacity to assess some requests for information and a further 21 days before a decision is made to disclose. The disclosure has to be allocated to an officer, which adds further delay. As of 17 July 2024, the force had 80 requests for information waiting for a decision, with the oldest dating back to May 2024. Disclosures should be made by police, but the force had passed some to children’s social care teams to make. It couldn’t provide details of how many disclosures it had passed to social care in the previous 12 months, how many disclosures had been made and what the result had been. This is a risk. Vulnerable victims may not be empowered with the information they need to decide whether to stay in a potentially abusive relationship. North Wales Police