Norfolk PEEL 2016
Legitimacy
How legitimate is the force at keeping people safe and reducing crime?
To what extent does the force treat all of the people it serves with fairness and respect?
Overall Norfolk Constabulary has a good understanding of the importance of treating the people it serves with fairness and respect. The force has a strong culture of ‘doing the right thing’ that the workforce understands, and has recently revised its vision and values to further support its approach. It seeks feedback and challenge from the people it serves using a range of techniques and continues to reach out to communities with less trust and confidence in the police.
The force has a good understanding of the issues that have the greatest effect on public perceptions of fair and respectful treatment and has made good progress since last year’s inspection in relation to its use of stop and search.
Norfolk Constabulary has demonstrated that it listens to feedback provided by the public and responds by making changes in how it operates to improve continually the service the force provides. While the force is good at demonstrating what it has done to specific groups, it could do more to demonstrate to the wider public how it is responding specifically to concerns about fair and respectful treatment.
Areas for improvement
- The force should improve how it demonstrates that it has taken action to improve how it treats all the people it serves.
How well does the force ensure that its workforce behaves ethically and lawfully?
Norfolk Constabulary is good at ensuring that its workforce behaves ethically and lawfully and has made good progress in responding to the issues we identified in the 2014 Police Integrity and Corruption inspection.
The force is effective in vetting people joining the organisation to ensure it recruits officers, staff and volunteers with high standards of ethical behaviour. It has developed and maintains an ethical culture among its workforce and routinely reinforces acceptable standards of behaviour. The force is aware of the large number of people within its workforce whose vetting has expired and is taking action to address this.
Norfolk Constabulary has effective processes to intervene early and manage identified risks and it seeks intelligence on potential corruption from a range of sources. It recognises abuse of authority for sexual gain as serious corruption which has a potential impact on public confidence. It is preparing its workforce and partner organisations who support vulnerable victims to recognise inappropriate relationships and behaviour and needs to ensure that the issue is consistently understood across the entire organisation.
The force recognises the importance of being open with the public when the behaviour of its staff falls below that expected. It ensures that hearings and outcomes are publicised and uses a variety of channels to update staff on the outcome of complaints and misconduct investigations to reinforce acceptable standards of behaviour.
In our 2016 national overview of police legitimacy, we recommended that all forces should have started to implement a plan to achieve the capability and capacity required to seek intelligence on potential abuse of position for sexual gain. In 2017, we reviewed of the plans put in place by all forces to in response to this recommendation.
Abuse of position assessment – Norfolk Constabulary
Areas for improvement
- The force should ensure it complies with all aspects of the current national guidelines for vetting.
- The force should improve how it clarifies and reinforces standards of behaviour to its workforce, in particular when dealing with vulnerable people including victims of domestic abuse.
To what extent does the force treat its workforce with fairness and respect?
Overall, Norfolk Constabulary is good at treating its workforce with fairness and respect. It uses a variety of methods to identify and understand the areas that have the greatest effect on the workforce’s perception of fair and respectful treatment. It listens to the concerns raised by staff and takes action to address them. The force plans to develop its understanding further by conducting a staff survey in 2016 to gain the views of the entire organisation.
Workforce wellbeing is important to Norfolk Constabulary, which provides a range of services to prevent the health of staff from suffering and take action to address their wellbeing needs. The force is good at identifying and understanding the workforce’s wellbeing needs and offers a wide range of wellbeing services but could do more to understand fully and take appropriate action to address the high levels of short and medium-term sickness among officers and staff. Staff told us that they felt proud to work for Norfolk Constabulary and were complimentary of the services provided by the organisation.
The force has made good progress in responding to last year’s findings about how it assesses the performance of its workforce and has developed and recently implemented a new way of assessing staff performance.