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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri
Time: 12:03 pm
Time: 12:03 pm
Results for police collaboration
3 results foundAuthor: Great Britain. Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary Title: Increasing efficiency in the Police Service: The role of collaboration Summary: Police collaboration is not a new phenomenon. Forces in England and Wales have always looked to share resources and to outsource some parts of their business in order to increase their operational resilience. Sharing resources can also result in significant savings. This makes collaboration - whether with another force, the public or private sector - one option available to the police as they work to close the 20% savings requirement outlined in the October 2010 Spending Review (SR). However, when Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) last asked about this, only 29 of the 43 forces across England and Wales had identified how savings could be made through collaboration. HMIC therefore took a further snapshot of collaborative activity in winter 2011 to see if progress had been made. This report describes what we found, and includes the projected financial savings from collaborative activity over the spending review period - the first time these comparative data have been collected or published. It also includes case studies of how different forces are collaborating (and with whom); and provides data and analysis to enable forces and their governing bodies to make informed choices when considering the value of future collaborations. We end with some key questions that might be useful to forces in making these decisions. Details: London: HMIC, 2012. 79p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 11, 2015 at: https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmic/media/increasing-efficiency-in-the-police-service.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United Kingdom URL: https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmic/media/increasing-efficiency-in-the-police-service.pdf Shelf Number: 134594 Keywords: PartnershipsPolice CollaborationPolice EffectivenessPolice Policies and PracticesPolicing (U.K.)Resource Sharing |
Author: Flannery, Kate Title: Police Force Collaboration: An Independent Review of the Warwickshire/West Mercia Strategic Alliance Summary: The global financial crisis in 2007 ushered in the era of austerity that now dominates much of the debate around public services - where do priorities lie, and how much of their cost can the public purse bear? For police forces the impact has been dramatic. The need to adapt policing models to meet changing and growing demands, with little real growth in income, had tested chief officers and police authorities for a number of years. But the coalition government has, since 2010, ramped up these challenges. All forces must now reduce budgets in real terms by up to 20 per cent over the five-year comprehensive spending review period, while attempting to satisfy local communities' demands for traditional/visible policing and transform operational practices to cope with internet-enabled crime that recognises no conventional boundaries. How have forces and Police and Crime Commissioners reacted to this challenge? Unsurprisingly, no silver bullet has been discovered - rather, a menu of options has emerged that encompass internal restructuring, savings programmes, outsourcing, regionalisation (mostly of specialist operations) and collaboration. HM Inspectorate of Constabulary has subjected forces' efforts to independent scrutiny and, while praising the achievement of budget reductions, has been largely critical of the failure to maximise collaborative opportunities. Indeed, it has identified some examples of retrenchment, despite the Home Office's expectation that collaboration would help forces meet the twin pressures of financial constraint and new policing demands. Against this background, the success of the collaboration between Warwickshire and West Mercia is notable. Its origins lie in discussions held in 2010 and early 2011 about the nature and extent of collaboration between the four forces in the West Midlands region. The region had a strong track record of productive working together, especially on specialist operations and protective services, but the four could not agree on how to move the agenda on. Concerned about their future prospects outside a regional collaborative framework, Warwickshire and West Mercia chief officers and police authority chairs agreed to embark on what became known as a 'strategic alliance'. After the dissolution of police authorities the newly elected Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) determined to continue with the alliance. Three years on, the bulk of policing and support services across the two force areas are delivered under unified leadership and processes. As a model of integrated police provision it has much to commend it, offering local people greater protection from harm and value for money. But despite a confidence in the Strategic Alliance and its impact, chief officers and the PCCs did not want to rest on their laurels and invited the Police Foundation to conduct an independent review. This looked critically at both achievements and lessons to be learnt, and identified ways in which the Alliance could progress. The work is summarised in this report, focusing on: - clarifying leadership roles; - strengthening accountability and governance; - securing a cultural identity for the Alliance without losing what is valued about Warwickshire and West Mercia as individual entities; - improving the ability to manage organisational change and resolving anomalies in structure and processes. Our conclusion is that the Strategic Alliance forged by Warwickshire and West Mercia is a beacon of collaboration that others can learn from, notably the integration of operational policing across force boundaries and the harmonisation of finance, HR and estate services. (A note of caution, however; its success is rooted in similarities of policing environment, culture and working practice that make its full replication elsewhere less than straight forward.) Details: London: Police Foundations (UK), 2014. 36p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 29, 2016 at: http://www.police-foundation.org.uk/uploads/holding/projects/police_force_collaboration.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.police-foundation.org.uk/uploads/holding/projects/police_force_collaboration.pdf Shelf Number: 135834 Keywords: Police AdministrationPolice CollaborationPolice Partnerships |
Author: Police Foundation Title: The governance of supra-force specialist policing capabilities Summary: In early 2006 the Home Secretary Charles Clarke announced a programme of mandated police force mergers in England and Wales that would have seen the number of police forces reduced by about half. Clarke envisaged a police service "close, responsive and accountable to the communities it serves, supported by larger forces with the capacity and specialist expertise to protect the public from wider threats such as serious and organised crime". In May 2006 Clarke was sacked, and by July his plans had been scrapped in favour of an emphasis, in the words of Prime Minister Tony Blair, on areas where there is the scope for "far greater strategic co-operation across force lines". The advent of a new government in 2010 was followed by the introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners and the 43 force structure seems here to stay. Instead, the growing emphasis in recent years has been on increased collaboration between police forces as a means of delivering an improved service for the public while also responding to the demands of austerity and fundamental changes to the nature of crime and police demand. This has been underpinned by the statutory 'duty to collaborate' introduced by the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011, but also financial incentives in the form of the Innovation Fund and Transformation Fund. A key challenge has been to reconcile force-level statutory accountability arrangements with the need to provide effective governance of collaborated arrangements across multiple forces. A range of approaches have been adopted across what is quite a mixed economy of largely ad-hoc and in some cases multi-layered collaborations. A focus on specialist capabilities In July 2014, HMIC called for a national debate regarding police reform and in June 2015 an influential group of policing leaders published Reshaping Policing for the Public, which set out a 'possible new approach' that would see 'specialist capabilities... consolidated into cross-force functions, strategically located and operating to national standards' with 'the most highly specialised capabilities (such as counter-terrorism)... delivered nationally'. In early 2016 the PCC chaired Police Reform and Transformation Board was established, with a specific programme focused on specialist capabilities such as armed policing and surveillance. As part of that work, a governance sub group was established, chaired by PCC Paddy Tipping, which commissioned the Police Foundation to undertake a review of the governance of police services delivered above force level. The objectives of the review were three-fold: 1. To review the existing secondary literature on collaboration. 2. To give all PCCs and chief constables the opportunity to feed in their views about the governance of collaboration arrangements, which we did by way of a questionnaire and the offer of follow-up telephone interviews. 3. To apply the learning from (1) and (2) to the Networked Policing Model proposed (after the consultation had closed) in the Specialist Capabilities Programme Phase One Report, in the form of a governance proposition to form the basis for further discussion. Networked Policing Model By adopting a 'mutual mindset' in policing, the proposed Networked Policing Model encompasses three things: 1. A strategic understanding of specialist capability supply and demand across all forces. 2. A more strategic approach to the development of specialist capabilities, including their leadership, tactics and standards. 3. A brokerage service that would link police forces to capabilities beyond current force and collaborative boundaries. Consultation findings Questionnaire responses were received from 14 PCCs and 19 chief constables, and with additional telephone interviews a total of 37 respondents informed our consultation. Although only a minority of PCCs and chief constables, their responses nevertheless provide a window on the balance of views regarding the governance of existing and future collaborative models. • Collaboration is believed to have delivered efficiencies and resilience, but there are concerns that governance arrangements are often complex, which can produce bureaucracy and weaken accountability. • Confidence in collaborative arrangements is contingent on personal trust, on geographical constraints, on historical relations between forces and on similarities in their size, outlook and character. There is opposition to any centrally organised brigading of capabilities that might ignore local nuances and undermine efforts already invested in collaboration. • There is some support for more specialist capabilities being delivered through regional clusters. Nonetheless there are concerns about whether shared capabilities will be available when required and will arrive in a form sympathetic to the character of local policing. In light of this it is clear to see why a model for the future that leaves existing and emerging regional structures intact – as the Networked Policing Model does – is a pragmatic approach. That said, it is likely that the transition to a Networked Policing Model will present governance challenges. Our consultation responses suggest a lack of consensus on basic principles, including around lines of accountability and Direction and Control. Collective agreement on these basic principles would seem to be a prerequisite for the kind of Networked Policing Model envisaged by the Specialist Capabilities Programme. Details: London: Police Foundation, 2016. 58p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 15, 2016 at: http://www.police-foundation.org.uk/uploads/holding/projects/governance_of_supra_force_specialist_policing_capabilities.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.police-foundation.org.uk/uploads/holding/projects/governance_of_supra_force_specialist_policing_capabilities.pdf Shelf Number: 141217 Keywords: Police AccountabilityPolice CollaborationPolice ReformPolice Specialist Units |