Staffordshire PEEL 2017

Staffordshire Police is good at treating the people it serves with fairness and respect. The importance to the force’s change programme of leadership and having the correct culture is well understood and the new chief constable has communicated with the workforce to reiterate the importance of ethical behaviour. Officers and staff receive training and guidance on the importance of effective communication skills and unconscious bias to ensure their interactions with the public are fair and respectful. However, some officers demonstrate only a limited understanding of some coercive powers, including handcuffing, and the criteria which necessitate the making of an arrest.

The force records and submits the required data on use of force in line with the new national recording standard. However, it does not scrutinise these data regularly to identify any trends and promote organisational learning. The independent ethics, transparency and audit panel is made up of members of the public, who examine policing in Staffordshire at a force level and publish the results. In addition, each of the 11 local policing areas has its own independent safer neighbourhood panel, which scrutinises a range of data and information on behalf of local communities.

Only four of the 200 stop and search records examined by HMICFRS did not have reasonable grounds recorded. The force has an effective process for monitoring a range of stop and search data, including body-worn video footage, by age and ethnicity as well as other information. The force would benefit from publicising any learning from its stop and search monitoring more widely throughout the force. The force has not yet trained all of its frontline officers on how to use stop and search powers fairly and respectfully. It has provided NCALT stop and search training to 60 percent of its frontline officers and is monitoring the completion rate of the training to ensure that all relevant officers understand how to use the powers fairly and with respect.

Although we did find some effective practices, Staffordshire Police requires improvement in how it demonstrates that its workforce behaves ethically and lawfully. The force does not routinely refer ethical decisions for any external advice, and published information relating to chief officers’ gifts and gratuities needs to be refreshed and updated more regularly. Only limited progress has been made in addressing the vetting backlog identified in 2016. We found limited evidence of the force providing written information on how to make a complaint at police stations and other public buildings or promoting the complaints process to groups with less confidence in the police. Information is available on the force website regarding how to contact the police using its deaf SMS text messaging and this information includes a sign-language video. However, more could be done to promote the full range of support available to people who may need additional assistance to make a complaint.

Complaint investigators engage properly with complainants and provide information at all stages of the complaints processes, adapting their communication methods where appropriate. The workforce is aware of the potential implications of discrimination for community relations. Those who investigate allegations of discrimination have a thorough understanding of equality and diversity matters and apply IPCC discrimination guidelines to their cases consistently, resulting in a high-quality service.

Staffordshire Police is good at treating its workforce with fairness and respect, although there are still areas where it can further improve. Established methods are used to secure feedback from the workforce and the force responds well, making discernible changes as a result. The force provides effective support when grievances are recorded and these are investigated and resolved appropriately. New processes have been introduced by the force to improve its understanding of potential unfairness, in terms of recruitment, retention and progression and how officers and staff from minority communities are treated in complaints and discipline procedures. However, these processes are still too new to be able to provide the force with a thorough understanding of the problem or to devise appropriate action plans to address disproportionality, if it is identified.

Workforce health and wellbeing is clearly a priority for the force. Building on the Workforce Wellbeing Charter award achieved in 2016, the force continues to provide a programme of innovative and well-considered wellbeing activities. These are encouraging the workforce to come forward and make use of the force’s wellbeing provision, supported by supervisors who have a thorough understanding of wellbeing risks. Improvements have been made in how well the force manages individual performance, but these are not yet well established. Promotion processes to select leaders are now far more open and are viewed as fair by the workforce. Further work is required to introduce and develop the force’s new talent enablement plan, aimed at producing talent for the future.