While I am satisfied with parts of Gloucestershire Constabulary’s overall performance, there are several areas that are of serious concern to me.
The force needs to improve its approach to preventing crime and anti-social behaviour, its investigative standards, and the protection it provides to vulnerable people. It lacks fundamental arrangements for tackling serious and organised crime and this must be addressed urgently. Although some improvements have been made in response to previous recommendations by HMIC, progress in other areas has been slow, and some aspects of the force’s position has declined.
I am deeply concerned that the force does not have essential tools in place to help it understand the threat from serious and organised crime, or to provide an effective response to this type of offending. This is particularly troubling as I set out many of the shortcomings in detail last year and the force has made little progress on them.
While neighbourhood teams communicate well with local people using a range of methods, their ability to build relationships and solve problems is affected because the force regularly reassigns them to cover other duties, taking them away from their routine preventative work.
The force has an inconsistent approach to allocating crimes for investigation. In some cases, investigators do not have the appropriate skills and experience to manage the complexity of the investigations they are assigned. However, it has made some progress in the way it protects those who are vulnerable from harm, and is making arrangements to build on this progress by including data held by partner organisations to develop its assessments of risk to its communities.
I am pleased that the force is well prepared to face its future financial challenges and it continues to make a considerable investment in its information and communications technology. This is part of its ambitious programme of modernising how it provides its services and supports its commitment to being at the forefront of addressing cyber-crime.
The force has a good understanding of the current and future demand for its services and it understands the capabilities of its workforce. I am pleased that the force’s financial and workforce planning arrangements are aligned and complement the focus on directing resources to areas of greatest risk. The force is intending to recruit a substantial number of police officers over the next three years to address the difficulty of directing resources to these areas and sustaining its commitment to neighbourhood policing.
The force has clearly defined values and expected behaviours that are well understood by the workforce. However, the force needs to improve how it looks for signs of suspicious behaviour and, in particular, its approach to managing the risk of officers or staff abusing their authority for sexual gain (that is, taking advantage of a position of power to exploit vulnerable victims of crime).
The force will want to address the need for systematic analysis of the feedback that it receives from the people it serves, and seek feedback from the public about the services that it provides.
In view of these findings, I have been in regular contact with the chief constable. I do not underestimate the nature of the challenge, or the force’s commitment to providing a consistently good service to the people of Gloucestershire.
Context
Gloucestershire Constabulary provides policing services to the county of Gloucestershire. Gloucestershire is generally affluent, although there are some areas of deprivation. The force area is home to around 0.6 million people, who live in a predominantly rural setting. Its urban areas include the city of Gloucester, and the towns of Cheltenham, Tewkesbury and Cirencester. The resident population is increased by university students and the large numbers who visit or travel through the county each year. The transport infrastructure includes 80 miles of motorway and trunk roads.
The proportion of areas in Gloucestershire that are predicted (on the basis of detailed economic and demographic analysis) to present a very high challenge to the police is very low compared to the national average. The most challenging areas are generally characterised by a high concentration of people living, working, socialising, or travelling in the area.
Features which both cause and/or indicate a concentration of people include the number of commercial premises, including licensed premises and fast-food premises, public transport, and social deprivation. In some areas, these features are combined.
Working arrangements
Gloucestershire Constabulary collaborates with Avon and Somerset Constabulary and Wiltshire Police on services including road network patrols, armed policing and dog support. The three forces have obtained a Police Innovation Fund grant from the Home Office to introduce a single information and communications technology infrastructure.
Looking ahead to 2017
In the year ahead, I will be interested to see how the force responds to this assessment and to the cause of concern and areas for improvement that HMIC identified last year.
I will be particularly interested to see:
- how the force makes progress in its approach to tackling serious and organised crime;
- how the force improves the consistency of its neighbourhood policing; and
- how the force improves the standard of its crime investigations.
