Dyfed-Powys PEEL 2018
Legitimacy
How legitimately does the force treat the public and its workforce?
To what extent does the force treat all of the people it serves with fairness and respect?
Areas for improvement
- The force should ensure it monitors a comprehensive set of data on its use of force to enhance its understanding of fair and effective use of this power.
- The force should ensure it monitors a comprehensive set of data on its use of stop and search to enhance its understanding of fair and effective use of these powers.
Dyfed-Powys Police is good at treating the public fairly. Its policies on contact with the public emphasise fairness and respect. The force is improving how it communicates with groups or individuals who are harder to reach.
The force values working with the community. But it does not assess all its community activities. This would help it to address the concerns of the community more effectively.
The workforce has varying levels of understanding of unconscious bias. Not all have received effective training.
All PCSOs have training on being ‘dementia friendly’. Call handlers have training in communicating with people with learning difficulties.
The workforce understands how and when to use force and the powers of stop and search. But Dyfed-Powys Police needs to improve how it monitors use of these powers. More data would help it to closely examine the use of these powers. Good monitoring will help the force identify and understand trends and unfairness. Then it can reassure any community or group concerned that they will get fair treatment.
The force has effective arrangements for the external scrutiny of use of force and stop and search. But it needs to further develop feedback on problems identified.
Detailed findings for question 1
How well does the force ensure that its workforce behaves ethically and lawfully?
Areas for improvement
- The force should ensure that its counter-corruption unit:
- has enough capability and capacity to counter corruption effectively and proactively; and
- can fully monitor all of its computer systems, including mobile data, to proactively identify data breaches, protect the force’s data and identify computer misuse.
- The force should monitor vetting decisions to identify disparities and disproportionality (e.g. BAME groups), and to reduce them where appropriate.
Dyfed-Powys Police requires improvement in behaving ethically and lawfully.
It is good at encouraging its workforce to make ethical decisions. Leaders in the force promote the code of ethics. Training for newly promoted sergeants and inspectors includes ethical dilemmas.
The force has a whistleblowing policy. It also has a programme of random drug-testing against substance misuse.
The force does not monitor applicants to see if they belong to certain protected minority groups. This means that the force cannot tell if its vetting decisions are fair to applicants from these groups.
Dyfed-Powys Police needs to improve how it spots and manages corruption risk. The force now monitors its mobile devices, along with other IT equipment. This will help the force to make sure that the workforce is using data appropriately. But it will add to the counter-corruption unit’s workload. The force needs to make sure it has enough people and resources to do this work.
The force manages business interests and gifts and hospitality well.
Detailed findings for question 2
To what extent does the force treat its workforce with fairness and respect?
Areas for improvement
- The force should ensure its grievance procedures are accessible, transparent and perceived by the workforce to be fair.
- The force should ensure that it has effective processes in place to identify and understand the causes of potential disproportionality and to take effective action to address these causes in the:
- recruitment, retention and progression of its workforce; and
- treatment of officers and staff with protected characteristics, who are subjected to complaint and misconduct investigations.
- The force should ensure it has effective systems, processes and guidance in place, in which all officers and staff are engaged, to manage individual performance and development.
- The force should ensure that its promotion and selection processes are accessible, transparent and perceived by the workforce to be fair.
Dyfed-Powys Police requires improvement at treating its workforce fairly.
Leaders are open to feedback from the workforce. The force acts on the feedback, but it doesn’t always tell the workforce what it has done.
Some of the workforce would not use the grievance procedure, so the force may not hear about their concerns.
The force needs to improve how it uses its data so that it can understand how fair its workforce thinks it is. It doesn’t check data about complaints, recruitment, retention and progression for different worker types. So it does not know if it treats any of these groups differently.
The force is good at looking after its workforce’s wellbeing. This means the workforce feels supported, and can continue working or get back to work sooner if they have had to take time off.
Dyfed-Powys Police should continue improving how it manages performance in the workforce. Some members of the workforce feel that supervisors do not always deal with poor performance the same way in all areas of the force. This can result in frustration over unequal treatment. The force has a new performance system which should help improve this.
The force needs to improve how it selects people for leadership roles. It asked the workforce about barriers to promotion. Answers included that the process was not open and accessible.
Detailed findings for question 3