Valuing the Police

Andrew Ford Director, Valuing the Police ProgrammeHMIC

Wednesday 6 November 2010

Overview

• Financial context• Changing landscape • HMIC’s recent work• What we found• Outsourcing• HMIC current and future work

Changing financial context

2005 - Police Force mergers proposed

2006 - Collaboration agenda

2008 - Economic downturn starts

2009 - Labour Government’s White Paper:• £100m cashable 2010/11 and £545m annually by 2014• £500m from process re-engineering

2010 - General election:• £135m in-year cuts for police• emergency budget and Comprehensive Spending Review signal 25% to 40% reduction in departmental budgets over 4 years

Changing landscape

• Recently formed Coalition Government• Policing in the 21st Century: Reconnecting police and the

people• Demise of Audit Commission, NPIA and others• Formation of National Crime Agency • Uncertain performance management regime• A lighter touch required from regulators

Recent HMIC work

• Pilots conducted in 4 forces – March to May 2010• Used management information with five days fieldwork• Checked availability of some visible resources across all

forces• Checked plans and preparedness across all forces and

police authorities• Development of Valuing the Police (VtP) inspection

approach and methodology, including bringing together Value for Money and Working for the Public inspections

• Pilot work informed “Valuing the Police: Policing in an age of austerity”

Reference groups

• Sector (ACPO, APA, Home Office, Audit Commission)• Non-sector (Deloitte, Alix Partners, BBC, BT, local

authorities and others)• UK Security and Resilience Industry Suppliers

Community (RISC) • NPIA, ACPO and HMIC alignment work

What we found - the public’s view

• VfM means that the police are effective (rather than everything is done at the lowest cost)

• By effective, this means cutting crime and ASB through visibility and dealing with criminals

• VfM to the public means:• “Visible policing presence”• “When they are around crime does not happen”• “It is not about cost but whether they are effective”

What we found – leadership/capability

• Police service has got better whilst getting bigger but level of cuts unprecedented in working lives of senior managers

• Step change needed in leadership’s preparedness to face challenges – smaller status quo not good enough

• Preparedness: • only 8 forces considered themselves well prepared for

scale of cuts they predicted • plans patchy and little scenario planning or activity

• Pace of action: not responded to emerging financial position (White Paper, collaboration)

What we found - cost control

• VfM profiles and POA data show variation in costs well in excess of £1bn

• Staff availability not always aligned with public priorities:• growth of specialisation • shift patterns (11% availability)• risk aversion, bureaucracy and specification burden• resource management and alignment historically based

• VfM equals “come in on budget”

What we found – system thinking

• Central constraints over local priorities • Absence of comparative financial information• Priority of accounting over leveraging resources - VfM

not incentivised • Risk averse• Uncertainty over scale of cuts• Leadership of business change• Limited searching for good practice or benchmarking• Interoperability

What is needed – re-design

• Significant opportunities to cut costs and improve availability through re-design of policing:• relentless drive to challenge all spending• prioritisation of police availability for the public• local leadership of reform, taking decisive action to

bridge gap• new architecture with central government and sector

working together to cut identified constraints• Government thinking carefully about distribution of cuts

Re-design: outsourcing

• Outsourcing is at forefront of Government and Treasury’s mind:• rumour of view that 50 – 60 per cent of police spend

could be outsourced• private sector offer of £1bn + saving in police IT

• No evidence of strategic approach across police service or wider public sector

• Often driven by public sector organisations’ lack of capital or desire to shift a problem

• Challenge is to move away from tactical approach to outsourcing

Re-design: outsourcing

• Private sector involvement generally restricted to back office and infra-structure:• police radio network, air support, fleet, IT and HQs• SW1 joint venture between one police force, local

authority and IBM includes procurement• Cleveland with Steria which includes call handling and

criminal justice along with business support and IT • Outsourcing needs to be part of business model and go

beyond back office and infra-structure

HMIC Valuing the Police work

• VFM profiles• Police Authority Inspections• Productivity• Preparedness

Current work - productivity studies

• Defining productivity (pragmatic)• Comparative productivity:

• what are the police doing?• force level productivity (‘customer journey’)• detailed analysis of productivity in one area -

community policing (neighbourhoods, response and roads policing

Current work - productivity studies

• Expanding availability work to cover a wider range of functions and all 43 forces:• simplified availability funnels for 4 key times• local uniform, Level1 investigations, intelligence and

tactical firearms• Shift systems, including use of resource planning tools:

• drivers for shift systems• use of Ximes and similar software• key considerations when selecting shift patterns

Current work - productivity studies

Methodology:• light touch • existing data, focus groups and some field work• questionnaire to forces October 2010 • trial with five forces just completed

• Productivity thematic in November or December 2010

Current work - preparedness

• Inspect police force/authority plans for the CSR period• Draw on VtP pilot inspections for methodology • Short inspections of all 43 between Jan and early March

2011• Immediate feedback• Thematic June 2011• Considering how to make results available to the public• Inspect progress with plans in Autumn 2011• Further preparedness inspections 2012 during transition

to Police and Crime Commissioners

Questions