Essex 2018/19

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PEEL: Police effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy 2018/19 – Essex Police

Zoë Billingham, Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary

HMI's observations

I am pleased with the performance of Essex Police in keeping people safe and reducing crime.

The force is good at preventing crime and anti-social behaviour. It is good at investigating crime and has continued to improve how it identifies and protects vulnerable people. It does this through more effective joint working with partners and greater use of protective powers.

Essex Police is ambitious in its planning for the future and wants to be at the forefront of innovative practice. The force understands its demand well. It uses this information to develop robust financial and workforce plans to make sure it uses its resources as efficiently as possible.

The force continues to uphold an ethical culture and promote standards of professional behaviour well. But it has more to do to assure itself that it has the capacity and capability to root out corruption.

Overall, I commend Essex Police for sustaining its positive performance over the past year. I am confident that it is well equipped for this to continue.

Essex Police is good at reducing crime and keeping people safe.

The force is good at investigating crime. Its investigations give satisfactory results. In 2017, we found the force should supervise investigations better. Its specialist departments have got better at guiding and supervising investigations. But investigations by uniformed response officers could be improved with better guidance.

Essex Police is good at protecting vulnerable people. It identifies vulnerability when people first contact the police. It actively looks for hidden harm. Increasing demand has stretched the force’s ability to respond to emergency and non-emergency calls. But it is working to rectify this by increasing capacity and improving efficiency.

In 2017, we assessed the force as good at:

preventing crime and tackling anti-social behaviour; and
tackling serious and organised crime.

View the five questions for effectiveness

Essex Police is good at operating efficiently and providing a sustainable service to the public.

It is good at meeting current demands and using resources. It analyses demand routinely. The high levels of demand put pressure on officers and some internal procedures make this worse. The force’s improvement programme is seeking better ways of working, including more joint working that will reduce demand.

The force is good at planning for the future. The demand forecasts it made in the past have proved accurate. It invests in ‘spend to save’ projects. These will help it free up capacity and funds that can be used in other priority areas. The force tells the public about its work and understands their expectations.

View the two questions for efficiency

Essex Police is good at treating the public and its workforce legitimately.

The force’s counter-corruption strategy is effective. In tackling abuse of position for a sexual purpose, it is improving links with organisations that support vulnerable victims of crime.

Less positively, the force needs to improve how it ensures its workforce behaves ethically and lawfully. We saw the force has an ethical culture. But it failed to vet its workforce before the national deadline, despite hard work by the vetting unit. It says it will be up to date by late spring 2019.

In 2017, we assessed the force as good at treating the public and its workforce fairly.

View the three questions for legitimacy

In addition to the three core PEEL pillars, HMICFRS carries out inspections of a wide range of policing activity throughout the year. Some of these are conducted alongside the PEEL inspections; others are joint inspections.

Findings from these inspections are published separately to the main PEEL reports, but are taken into account when producing the rounded assessment of each force's performance.

Joint targeted area inspection of the multi-agency response to abuse and neglect in Southend-on-Sea – published 9 May 2018

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Key facts – 2019/20

Force Area

1,417 square miles

Population

1.86m people

8% local 10 yr change

Workforce

94% frontline police officers

92% national level

3.04 per 1000 population

3.69 national level

6% 10yr change in local workforce

5% 10yr national change

Victim-based crimes

0.07 per person

0.06 national level

21% Local 5 year trend

9% National 5 year trend

Cost

47p per person per day local

59p per person per day national

Essex 2018/19

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HMI's observations

Effectiveness

How effectively does the force reduce crime and keep people safe?

Efficiency

How efficiently does the force operate and how sustainable are its services to the public?

Legitimacy

How legitimately does the force treat the public and its workforce?

Other inspections

How well has the force performed in our other inspections?

Other reports