South Yorkshire PEEL 2017

South Yorkshire Police understands the importance of treating people with fairness and respect and continues to reinforce this through training and raising awareness. The chief constable promotes the need to treat people with fairness and respect to members of the workforce. In turn, they receive training in effective communications with the public and on the fair and respectful use of their coercive powers. However, only limited training has taken place in understanding unconscious bias. The force has undertaken some work to better understand the public’s concerns about fair and respectful treatment, seeking feedback from those who have used the police’s services and from external advisory groups. It has examined its use of its stop and search powers. However, we found that the local advisory groups were not as effective and diverse as they could be. The force has started work to address this problem.

South Yorkshire Police has strong ethical leadership through its chief officer team, which was formed this year. Leaders are good at seeking advice from others and consider the ethical implications of their decisions. The force is developing and maintaining an ethical culture by emphasising the behaviour it expects of its workforce. It has drawn up a realistic plan to vet the workforce in line with national guidelines. The force provides the public with clear, useful and accessible information about how to make a complaint. It is good also at updating complainants, providing them with the relevant statutory information and supplying them with findings once the complaint has been dealt with. The force identifies and investigates allegations of discrimination well. However, it needs to make sure that it refers all complaints to the Independent Police Complaints Commission that meet the criteria for mandatory referral.

South Yorkshire Police needs to improve the fairness of some aspects of the way in which its treats its workforce, especially in terms of the way it supports and communicates with them about wellbeing and prevents wellbeing problems. The force is beginning to improve its understanding of the risks and threats, however. It uses a limited range of effective, preventative measures to improve wellbeing and minimise the risks. This is particularly the case for officers and for staff working in specialist units. The force recognises its shortcomings in this field and advertised recently for a specialist in human resources to lead this work. The force seeks feedback and challenge from the workforce. Its processes for managing performance and for identifying and developing talent and selecting for leadership are fair, open and accessible. However, independent oversight of these processes is limited. The force has a full understanding of the importance of addressing potential disproportionality in recruitment, retention, progression, and complaint and misconduct allegations, and is addressing this. It deals with grievances well and the workforce has confidence in this process.