North Yorkshire PEEL 2017

North Yorkshire Police requires improvement in how it understands demand. The force has a good understanding of its current demand and has gathered and analysed data from a variety of sources. It is developing its understanding of the time it takes its response officers to deal with this demand and how they deal with it, and it will be seeking to use this understanding to improve the deployment of its response officers in the future.

The force needs to improve its understanding of the extent to which inefficient processes affect the demand on the force. Its approach to risk and its prioritisation of demand have improved, with the force now using a risk-based approach to individual needs when assessing and responding to demand. The force has internal processes in place to understand the benefits and unintended consequences of changes it makes to the service it provides to the public.

Previously, the force recognised that it did not have a means of obtaining ideas from its workforce and, since our inspection, a new ideas and suggestion scheme has been launched.

North Yorkshire Police is judged to require improvement for how well the force uses its resources. The force has a good understanding of the capability of its workforce and the skills they need to perform their role.

The force understands the capabilities of its leaders and encourages managers to assess their leadership skills to understand better how they can develop as leaders. Through the force workforce plan, it has identified skills gaps, projected leavers and vacancies and, where possible, has succession plans for the future. The force seeks skills and new talent from a broad pool of candidates, advertising externally when appropriate. However, although it has decided on its priorities and where to allocate its workforce, it only has a broad understanding of how this affects other areas across the force, rather than a detailed understanding.

The force has longstanding joint ventures and collaboration with regional police forces and its partner organisations but it should do more to work with other organisations whose resources are decreasing and which are causing an increase in demand on the force. It has suffered significant delays with its plans to implement new technology and is yet to equip its frontline police officers with modern equipment to increase officer visibility and improve efficiency, with officers able to complete tasks while on patrol rather than being required to return to a police station.

North Yorkshire Police is judged to require improvement in the way that it is planning for the future. The force has a developing understanding of future demand. It has assessed the risks for the community and priorities for the force. It has further developed its understanding of the extent of its predicted demand through analytical assessments and policing operations. However, it could do more to understand how its communities are changing and likely to develop in the future to understand better the future policing services and skills needed.

North Yorkshire Police has been slower than other forces to innovate and embrace the opportunities offered by new technology to improve its efficiency. The force has a number of continuing ICT projects to equip its officers better with modern technology. The projects have suffered delays which mean that the technology to improve officer efficiency will not be available until at least 2018.

The force has aligned its financial plans with workforce plans and has prepared plans to develop and change the infrastructure and workforce so it operates to meet the expectations of the public in the future. Although the force has a good track record to date of making the required savings, it is still facing a significant financial challenge ahead. Despite further planned savings over the next four years, it is predicting a shortfall in its budget from 2019/20 onwards, and it has yet to identify additional savings to address this.