Federation Open Meeting 25th November 2008 Chairman's Speech at Federation Open Meeting Chief Constable, Chair of the Police Authority, guests, ladies and gentlemen welcome to Kent Police Federation's Open Meeting at the Hilton Hotel. Let me begin by introducing the platform to you. Since we met last year a number of colleagues around the country have sadly passed away. The sacrifices made by police officers were brought into stark reality at the weekend when 4 officers in Northern Ireland were tragically killed whilst responding to an assistance call from a colleague; our thoughts are with their families, friends and colleagues. Let us show the strength and unity of the police family and stand for a few moments in quiet remembrance. When we met in early December last year the Home Secretary had just picked our pockets over pay and feelings were running a tad high. Sir, even you were driven to describe the Home Secretary as a cheat - perhaps something to leave off your CV!!!! What a difference a year can make. Whilst I will leave the detail to Paul, it would be remiss of me not to mention the 3 year pay deal. This deal will have come as a surprise to many if not all of you. It certainly did to us when we were consulted over whether to accept or reject it. Let me be bold - Paul, along with the rest of the Staff Side of the PNB, you were absolutely right to accept the deal. Set against a stock market slump, a recession, rising unemployment and experts projecting a sharp fall in inflation it would have been foolhardy and reckless to reject the best multi-year deal in the public sector. But the fight isn't over - the Home Secretary's plans for a police pay review body are merely stalled for the life of this parliament. As Gordon Brown seems to be revelling in the current economic crisis (his Falkland's War as some commentators have dubbed it) one could be forgiven for suspecting a clearing of the decks prior to a general election in perhaps May/June next year; so the life of this parliament could be somewhat curtailed. There is still the issue of properly binding arbitration - that is a must. Never again must the events of last December be repeated. Never again can the Home Secretary (of whatever party) be allowed to treat the police service with such utter contempt. Now to local issues! Sir, last year we welcomed the work being done by Project Blueprint; the work initiated by the then DCC - Mr Barker-McCardle; the work that talked of creating the Blue Team; the work that talked so passionately about putting the quality back. Quite rightly we welcomed this work for it was long overdue. Quite rightly the Force engaged with officers and staff through focus groups, and you sir personally launched the outcomes. But where are we now - do officers really see any changes? I wonder. Let's examine some of the headline issues, such as performance, bureaucracy and shifts. We stated throughout the Blueprint process, and long before, that tackling the tick box, performance culture was key to the provision of an improved quality of service to the people of Kent. Officers from senior managers to constables made clear their views during the consultation process - here are some quotes: "We're so performance driven we have lost track completely." "Too target-orientated. There doesn't seem to be any care given to the actual service we provide." "Things that don't figure as a target get ignored. Policing is not about filling in forms, but serving the public." I hoped that such views would kick start a quiet but significant revolution to change our culture. Sadly I was wrong. At the recent Big Lecture/Conversation I was disappointed to see that, despite the Home Office providing a principle measure of performance - namely public confidence - the Force has chosen to make a big push on sanction detections and reducing crime, a push to place us in the top 2 of our group of most similar forces and in the top 10 in the country over the next 3 years. Why disappointed - surely catching criminals and preventing crime are two of the main functions of policing? Normally I would agree but let's examine what they actually mean. Well catching criminals = sanction detecteds and these are the most discredited performance measurement - what have they achieved: Focused our attention, too often, onto easy or soft targets. Criminalised people, including children, who quite frankly should never have been in the CJ system. Alienated the public. Attracted unwanted adverse publicity - the sort of publicity that has actually undermined public confidence. Choked the discretion and common sense out of policing. Encouraged dubious bonus schemes that award cash to teams' tea funds for the most arrests and sanction detecteds. Crime reduction, in the modern 21st Century world of policing, too often has little to do with crime prevention. When officers are encouraged, gently of course, to deal with public order arrests as drunk and disorderly, so as not to inflate the violence figures, that is neither crime prevention nor reduction; that is crime reclassification - move it out of the crime figures! When a store detective gets the thief to return the items because it takes too long for the police to arrive - that too is not crime prevention. We are told that reducing crime and increased detecteds lifts public confidence. The reality is they don't. The public are more likely to believe in the tooth fairy than the figures that are produced - they rely on their experience. Chief Constable this is not the first time I have mentioned tick box policing. At times we have been a lone voice but now it seems, as with so many Police Federation messages, our views are gaining popularity elsewhere. The Home Affairs Select Committee's report, "Policing in the 21st Century", makes a number of observations and I quote - The current system of ensuring police performance has distorted operational priorities, criminalised many individuals for trivial minor misdemeanours, and prevented forces from focusing on what is important locally. ……… It continues with a tag that I wish I had thought of - police forces are hitting the target but missing the point! And there's more - Officers should be given greater discretion so they can deal with incidents in the most appropriate way……… Public confidence is raised by the provision of a quality public service; quality is assured by giving officers the freedom and time to exercise their judgement and experience; allowing them to be innovative. The unrelenting pursuit of sanction detecteds strangles innovation and curtails freedom. If we have learnt nothing else over the last 15 years we must surely have realised that so called good statistical performance does not equal public confidence. Time is the mother and father of a quality service; quality requires time, time to deal with issues properly and proportionately. Tick box performance has created a bureaucracy that has a voracious appetite for time. Let's examine a few examples - on their own it is easy to dismiss them as minor, but they have an accumulative effect. PPI and TPI - Officers work to populate their PPI sheets; for supervisors to spend their time populating TPI sheets to in turn populate pointless graphs and pie charts that tell us everything about quantity but nothing about quality. I have studied PPI sheets from around the county for different roles. I have asked myself - what do they show? What is their useful purpose? Do these narrow sets of figures accurately reflect what a police officer actually does or are they a reflection of the targets by which others measure their worth? Where is the quality? Quality Assurance Checks with our "customers" - You'd be forgiven for thinking this is all about quality. Well, I've seen the guidance to inspectors and sergeants. 2.5 pages of A4 about when to do them, how to do them, how many to do and where to send the results, but only one sentence about giving feedback to the officer who attended and nothing about the development of that officer if so required. Whatever next - perhaps we'll be asking prisoners (or are they customers too now in this bright new world) for their feedback - How satisfied were you with the room service? Was the menu choice comprehensive enough? Were you offered the turn down service for your bed? Neighbourhood Policing - Let me be absolutely clear, we are totally supportive of NP - we were calling for its reintroduction before the politicians and ACPO decided it was fashionable again. I have been to the NP Programme Boards - a veritable cast of thousands trying to micro manage the neighbourhood officer almost to the point of telling them when to breathe in and out. I have described it as trying to run through glue. This style has created a bureaucracy that is all about quantity - from the number of school buses travelled on to the number of abandoned vehicles dealt with. Where is the quality? Sir you were brave last year when you rightly stood with the Federation over the pay deal. You were the first ACPO officer to do so and we thank you for that. How about doing it again? Why not at a stroke ditch these PPI's TPI's and other tick box measurements. Restore discretion and common sense; trust officers to deal with matters appropriately. Get sergeants out from behind the computers; give them the time to supervise and develop their officers. Give them the time to witness their officers at work first hand, not through the poor substitute of so called customer feedback calls and tick box survey forms. Let's get back to the real notion of neighbourhood policing when local officers knew their problem families; when local officers recognised a newcomer to the area as an out of place visitor; when officers knew their patches, knew the problems and knew the people of real influence. Let's return to an era when they had time to engage with the real community not some manufactured representative partner group. Let's return to a time when policing was about policing and not about some ill-informed politician's idea of policing that's all window dressing and no substance. That is how you build public confidence. This is not new. The only bit of this you could call revolutionary is perhaps the turning of the wheel. To use a football analogy we could be like Chelsea - recruit lots of talent who mystify and bamboozle with tricks and dives; always up or near the top of the league; supporters, pundits and other so called armchair experts patting us on the back and telling us how good we are. Yet no one likes us! Or - we could aspire to be like Everton. Rarely at or near the top of the league but a real community football club developing local talent and forging real links with the local community. Like football, any open meeting speech is a game of two halves so….. Sir, now to something less controversial - shift systems. In early summer a review of the current shift systems was announced based on the theory that current response shift systems were now inadequate and inappropriate for current demand. We have been told that one area in particular is suffering - Medway. Their area commander believes they cannot continue with the current pattern for response officers. Well let me give this small clue to assist, not just Medway's, but all area commanders - if you keep stripping out officers from response to populate other teams, it isn't rocket science that you reach a position where there aren't enough response officers left to answer the calls. That isn't down to the shift pattern. We need to better manage shifts. This need is not new. In 1992, yes 1992, the Home Office conducted a study into effective shift systems. This study confirmed the need to have a tailored approach to shifts. It concluded that overlap shifts must be managed effectively. Well 16 years later when I hear the same observations I ask myself the question - Why? I think I have the answer. Duty planning, shift planning is something that is almost an afterthought. It shouldn't be. It should be a priority We have seen the early work and proposals around shifts and understand that the debate has moved on from these; moved on from the simplistic view of merely matching numbers of officers to STORM records. We welcome the DCC's acceptance around compromise over what the Force and officers want; we welcome his commitment to consultation; we welcome his understanding around the complexity of demand. Whilst we look forward to discussing proposals in the future I will make these observations now: The 3 shift pattern proposals we have seen are not acceptable. 8 hour shift patterns that restrict rest days and predominantly involve stretches of 7 days at work have no place in policing in the 21st century. Leave then where they belong in the Black Museum. Demand must be viewed in its widest sense; it cannot and must not just be based on STORM records. We need to understand how that demand is shifting under Op Improve; we need to understand how we can impact on demand by having officers on duty at different times; we need to understand what officers do in their down time from calls - catch upon their paperwork perhaps - heaven forefend they might even get something to eat!!!! Please do not look to our friends in Sussex for a shift pattern. My contacts tell me 3 things are up in Sussex - sickness, transfers to the Metropolitan and the use of Red Bull. Do not underestimate the strength of feeling around shift systems. Our frontline response officers deserve the best shift system we can give them. They are not just there to tick a few boxes - they are the first responders to matters of life and death. They are the frontline of the first emergency service. They deserve to have sufficient resources to do their job properly. They must not be sold short. History tells us that in the desire to continually match resources and demand we end up with an arbitrary staffing figure. We have had Optimum levels, desired levels, critical levels; call it what you will they have all been used. BUT what we end up with is a MINIMUM level; perhaps just enough to do the job with little in the way of back up, or a crewing policy that increases the risks to unacceptable levels. There is view that the current shift system is broken. All we need is a force wide system and all our problems will be solved. Let me be candid, 5 out of the 6 areas (on the data produced) have between 3 and 13 hours per week where they fall below the demand supply comparison. That's between 3 and 13 hours over a complete week. I would not have thought that equalled broken beyond repair. Yes there is a real issue at Medway but as I have said when you asset strip your patrol teams to do other things then it is no wonder. We look forward to working with the team in an effort to find some answers which we fully accept is going to be challenging. Sir if I can just finish with a plea and it is around the notion of the Policing Pledge. I have seen a Home office version Let me give you a flavour of some of the highlights. Aim to answer 999 calls within 10 seconds and other calls within 30 seconds and tell you how your call will be handled. Respond to emergencies getting to you within 15 minutes sooner if possible Return calls and respond to email enquires about local issues within 24 hours. You get the picture - many of us have seen it all before - The Way Ahead, Charter Marks. We are committed to providing a quality service to the public, but this Policing Pledge is just another long list of tick box indicators with bureaucracy written all over it!! The public have told us often enough, it's no use answering the phone quickly if the response is poor. Let's not return to arbitrary time limits on emergency calls - we abandoned those for sound reasons. Sir, and Mrs Barnes, if we are to adopt some sort of Policing Pledge then let's make sure ours is about quality not quantity. Our Pledge must be more than just a tin of furniture spray designed to supply a convenient, superficial shine. Sir I will ask you to address the meeting.