I have serious concerns about the overall performance of South Yorkshire Police.
South Yorkshire Police has faced several significant challenges since my assessment last year: the outcome of the Hillsborough inquests, continued calls for a public inquiry into the police response to the miners’ strike at Orgreave in 1984, and the requirement to implement the recommendations from the 2014 independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham.
The impact of these challenges, in combination with the need to provide a continuing service to the people of South Yorkshire, has prompted me to pay particularly close attention to the force’s performance throughout the year.
I have some concerns about South Yorkshire Police’s approach to preventing crime and tackling anti-social behaviour. The changes the force made last year to the way it provides neighbourhood policing weakened its ability to tackle the threats facing the people of South Yorkshire effectively. Staff are regularly taken away from preventative neighbourhood work to cover more reactive duties.
I am reassured that the force generally allocates crimes to investigators with the appropriate training and experience, and investigations of less complex crime are of an acceptable quality. However, it needs to be more consistent in how it supervises investigations, and there is a significant backlog of digital evidence to be examined.
I am pleased with the progress that South Yorkshire Police has made since my last assessment in how it keeps vulnerable people safe, but further improvements are needed. The force is now generally good at identifying signs of vulnerability, and it is more consistent in how it handles calls reporting incidents involving domestic abuse. However, the quality of risk assessments made at the scene of domestic abuse incidents is poor, which affects subsequent decisions about safeguarding victims and referral to other services. I am also concerned about the quality of the force’s investigations of more complex crimes, and in particular those involving vulnerable victims.
I am pleased with South Yorkshire Police’s approach to tackling serious and organised crime. The force has good processes for gathering intelligence and mapping organised crime groups, and it prioritises and tackles organised crime effectively. It also has effective measures for deterring people from becoming involved in organised criminality.
South Yorkshire Police has a very limited understanding of the current and likely future demands for its services. The force urgently needs to develop a more comprehensive understanding that includes so-called hidden demand, under-reporting of crimes, and the consequences of partner organisations changing the services they provide. The force needs to work with partner organisations to develop a shared understanding both of the services that will be provided by individual organisations and of those that will be provided through joint working arrangements, such as safeguarding vulnerable people.
The force’s current operating model was built on this limited understanding of the demands for its services, and that this has contributed to the inconsistent service the force is providing to the people of South Yorkshire.
The force has taken some steps to understand and reduce the wasteful use of its resources arising from inefficient working practices, but it needs to extend this work to its other practices.
I am also concerned that the force does not have a comprehensive workforce plan, and that its understanding of its workforce’s capability and capacity is poor. This compromises the force’s understanding of the costs of providing its services and its ability to match resources to demand.
While the force’s financial assumptions are prudent, its financial plans are limited by the inadequacy of its workforce plans and of its understanding of future demands. However, I am encouraged by the force’s acceptance of these concerns and the action it is taking to address them.
The force is very limited in how it seeks feedback from the people it serves. The force needs to improve its understanding of the public’s perceptions of what constitutes fair and respectful treatment, and use it to inform improvements in its practices.
South Yorkshire Police has a good understanding of the risks to the integrity of the organisation, including signs of potential corruption. The force takes seriously the abuse of authority for sexual gain (that is, taking advantage of a position of power to exploit vulnerable victims of crime), but needs to improve its approach to identifying such behaviours.
The force does not seek feedback from its workforce regularly. However, I am pleased that the force plans to conduct a staff survey to remedy this.
In view of the findings in this assessment, I have been in regular contact with the new chief constable who understands the challenges facing the force. I do not underestimate how much improvement is needed for the force, led by its new chief officer team, to provide a consistently good service to the people of South Yorkshire.
Context
South Yorkshire Police provides policing services to the county of South Yorkshire. South Yorkshire has a high level of poverty, although there are a small number of affluent areas. The force area is home to around 1.4 million people, who mainly live in the city of Sheffield and the towns of Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley.
The resident population is increased by university students and the large numbers who visit, socialise in, commute into, or travel through the county each year. The transport infrastructure includes 91 miles of motorway and trunk roads, major rail stations and an airport.
The proportion of areas in South Yorkshire that are predicted (on the basis of detailed economic and demographic analysis) to present a very high challenge to the police is broadly in line with 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 that 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
South Yorkshire Police collaborates with Humberside Police on human resources and criminal justice functions, and on the development of joint information and communications technology projects, such as hand-held mobile data devices. They have also merged some of their operational policing functions, such as roads policing, firearms and the dog section.
South Yorkshire Police also collaborates with other police forces in the Yorkshire and Humber region to provide a range of specialist policing services. South Yorkshire Police leads on procurement, stores and firearms training.
Looking ahead to 2017
In the year ahead, I will be interested to see how South Yorkshire Police responds to this assessment and to the areas for improvement that HMIC identified last year.
I will be particularly interested to see:
- how the force improves its approach to neighbourhood policing;
- how the force continues to progress in responding to and supporting vulnerable people;
- how the force develops its understanding of the demand it faces and better matches its resources to that demand; and
- how the force improves its planning for the future.
