Lincolnshire PEEL 2016

Lincolnshire Police is good at preventing crime and tackling anti-social behaviour. This grade is consistent with HMIC’s 2014 crime inspection and 2015 effectiveness reports. However, the force’s analytical capacity and its ability to process intelligence and continually improve its approach to the prevention of crime and reduce anti-social behaviour are growing challenges, which need to be quickly addressed.

Force priorities reflect a commitment to crime prevention, supporting victims, working with others and keeping people safe. Systems and ways of working, together with a range of powers and tactics, enable the force to work together with other organisations to tackle anti-social behaviour and keep people safe. Neighbourhood teams, although smaller, are dedicated to their areas, which means there is effective working with other organisations at a local level.

Lincolnshire Police’s approach to investigating crime and reducing re-offending is good. It has greatly improved over the last two years. Work is still needed to improve the quality of some investigations, but the force has effective processes and leadership, raising investigative standards.

Arrangements for initial investigations are based on an assessment of threat, risk and harm, and the allocation of complex and non-complex crimes generally works well. Recorded crime has broadly remained stable, a position which compares favourably with most other forces.

Investigations are generally carried out well, with good results. The approach to investigating crime is improving, although there are still inconsistencies across the force in recording supervisor directions and completing victim care plans.

When offenders are not immediately arrested, there is no force-level oversight of cases where there is a named suspect and no prioritised process to ensure that those offenders who cause the most harm are captured and dealt with quickly.

Victims are provided with a satisfactory service, including special measures, updates and victim personal statements.

The force and other organisations actively manage those offenders who pose a risk to the public. The force is adequately prepared to manage the risk posed by dangerous and sexual offenders.

Lincolnshire Police requires improvement in protecting those who are vulnerable from harm, and supporting victims Progress has been made since HMIC’s 2015 effectiveness inspection, but important areas still need to improve.

The force has insufficient understanding of the nature and scale of vulnerability, because there are too few analysts, the IT systems cannot record vulnerability and domestic abuse is not always recorded accurately.

The force is generally good at identifying and protecting vulnerable people at initial contact. Those attending domestic abuse incidents, however, are not consistently recording how children are affected. The force still has an inconsistent approach to the management of risk for missing and absent children. Not all missing persons are reviewed in accordance with force policy, and the missing record is not always created on a specialised database.

Some aspects of the response to child sexual exploitation have improved, and work with other organisations helps keep children safe. However, staff in the central referral unit have not been trained and not all frontline staff know how to identify and respond to possible child sexual exploitation.

The force’s specialist investigative capacity is generally sufficient, except for in the internet child abuse team.

Lincolnshire Police is good at tackling serious and organised crime. It assigns competent lead responsible officers to all mapped organised crime groups to manage them throughout their active lifespan and works positively with a range of partner organisations to collect information and solve problems. It uses an appropriately wide range of tactics to disrupt organised crime groups, but should do more to assess which are the most effective.

The force has access to an extensive range of specialist policing capabilities provided by the East Midlands Special Operations Unit. This unit is predominantly targeted at the highest harm groups, and the force invests in some areas where it thinks further local support is required, including through a serious and organised crime unit. It is developing its approach to managing serious and organised criminals to prevent them from re-offending and it continues to deter people from becoming involved, particularly through initiatives to support families.

Lincolnshire Police engages well with the public about serious and organised crime using a range of innovative methods. These include its nationally recognised REPEAT (reinforcing elderly persons’ education at all times) and REVIVE (repeat elderly vulnerable intimidated victim engagement) initiatives, which use police volunteers and health and social care workers to support vulnerable people to protect themselves against crime.

Lincolnshire Police has appropriate leadership arrangements to oversee the force’s preparedness to respond to all the threats identified in the Strategic Policing Requirement. The force has made an assessment of the risk of these threats for the communities of Lincolnshire, although this is more limited for cyber-crime and child abuse. There is regular testing of its response to these threats with other emergency services, such as the ambulance and fire services, and other organisations, for example local authorities and the military. Learning from this testing and exercising is shared with the local resilience forum and also at regional and national level meetings. Business continuity plans are in place to enable the force to continue to respond to these threats in the event of a major disruption to services.

The force is part of a collaboration called the East Midlands operational support services, which has adequately assessed the threat of an attack requiring an armed response. Plans are in place to increase firearms capability by March 2017. Progress is being made with an interim plan and the recruitment of officers to achieve the budgeted number of firearms officers.