Speeches and Statements

Citizen focus and 'people first' policing

Speech by Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, on the importance of citizen focus and ‘people first’ policing, at the National Conference for Senior Women in Policing, in February 2008.

I am delighted to be here this afternoon. The theme of your conference – the importance of citizen focus and ‘people first’ policing – strikes me as particularly timely and relevant. So too is your emphasis on providing a female perspective on these issues.

I understand that the last presentation you had before lunch asked ‘Are we still falling over the glass cliff?’ – and that the talk immediately after me this afternoon is about taking care of your physical well-being.

I don’t quite know what that makes me – something half-way between a pep-talk and a health-check – so I’ll try to oblige by being full of encouragement and enthusiasm for your careers, but stop short of any announcements that may raise your blood pressures too sharply!

In all seriousness, I think it’s great that you are giving such a high profile to issues of personal development and personal well-being.

When we’re talking about ‘people first’ policing, we shouldn’t let ourselves forget that one of the most important groups of people involved in policing are, of course, the police themselves. And the phrase ‘people first’ applies to you as well as to everyone else. Your needs need to be recognised and your expectations met, just as much as those of the public.

It’s a sign of the work you are all doing in your individual forces that these issues are being taken seriously. And I’d like to acknowledge the supportive role played by the British Association for Women in Policing (BAWP) – as well as Chief Constable Julie Spence for the leading role she has taken over the last two years.

Citizen focus and neighbourhood policing

Making a success of citizen-focussed policing has implications not just for the public face of policing – how we interact and engage with local communities – but for the internal wiring of policing as well.

So today I would like to pose two questions, that I think go to the heart of ‘people first’ policing – as a challenge and as an opportunity:

How do we make sure that we have in place the right working practices to make ‘people first’ policing work for the police as well as for the people?
And how do we ensure that the best leadership opportunities are there for police officers so that they can continue to shape the future of policing?

I’ll take each of them in turn. Yesterday, I was with the Prime Minister and ACPO lead Matt Baggott to set out our plans to make neighbourhood policing a living reality in every area of the country.

Where neighbourhood policing is already is place, it’s a proven success in addressing community priorities and building public confidence in policing. It’s not only making neighbourhoods feel safer – it is making them genuinely safer.

Thanks to you and your colleagues, there are already 3,600 teams up and running. That’s 13000 sergeants and constables working with PCSOs and specials to engage with local communities, agree local priorities with them, and report much more fully on progress in the local fight against crime.

And by the beginning of April, every area in England and Wales will have a neighbourhood policing team in place.

This not a gimmick, not a cosmetic exercise. It’s a clear demonstration of our shared commitment to providing visible, reassuring and responsive local policing – policing that meets the needs and priorities of local people.

Getting full coverage by April is not, however, an end in itself. It’s the springboard for the next stage of delivery – to ensure we have the depth of service that will help to transform the way citizens engage with their local police.

Between now and April, we are working with ACPO, the NPIA and every police force in England and Wales to get out the message about neighbourhood policing through media advertising and household leafleting campaigns.

Locally, teams will also be making house-to-house calls and running street surgeries in community centres and shopping centres.

Next month, we’ll launch the national Neighbourhood Policing website, where members of the public will be able to key in their postcode and get the names and numbers of their local team.

And over the next few months, there will be many other opportunities for people to give the police their views.

Neighbourhood teams will hold public meetings, street roll calls, and face-to-face briefings to speak to as many as the public as possible. Some will be late in the evening, or at weekends, to make sure everyone has the chance to contribute.

From July, monthly local crime information will be available everywhere – and local teams will be a key way to give out this information.

These activities will go beyond promoting Neighbourhood Policing as a concept, to delivering real changes in service and service standards.

From April, our focus will be on ensuring the ‘strength in depth’ that will really make the difference for local communities.

I believe we can achieve this by working with you to learn from what is working well already, capitalising on the very best of neighbourhood policing practice, and engaging in two-way communication with communities.

The use of local contracts between the police and the public – allowing each community to shape the way local policing works – can help us to deliver this important change.

And I’m clear that we won’t achieve what we want by simply ticking the box in April. We need to ensure that this approach to policing flourishes and takes on a life of its own in every community, engaging the police and the public in a new dialogue and common purpose about how to keep their streets and neighbourhoods safe.

It’s also clear to me that visible, accessible neighbourhood teams solving local problems is only part of the reforms we can achieve together.

Thanks to the hard work and initiative of so many forces, there are examples in abundance how best to engage with the public; how best to identify what they want; and how best to deliver it as an integral part of the policing service:

Like the Re-contact bureau in Lancashire that provides regular updates to victims;
Or the “tune in” sessions for communities to meet their local teams in Surrey;
Or the Beat Crime website in West Yorkshire that provides local crime information by postcode;
And the South Wales “Partnership and Communities Together” meetings for the local Chinese community.

Everywhere police forces are putting public needs and expectations at the very heart of their work.

Now I want to think about how we take neighbourhood policing to the next level. That’s partly about embedding what works well everywhere, and where I will be looking to the outcomes of Louise Casey’s review. But I am also interested in how we can frame neighbourhood policing teams as the ‘front end’ for policing more generally.

Citizen focused policing requires a culture where staff across all levels of the police service understand the needs and priorities of the citizen, and have these in mind when designing and delivering services.

As Julie has shown through the lead she’s taken on this work for ACPO, it’s not an add-on or an optional extra. It’s an approach that should be taken by every individual in every aspect of the police service.

I want to place the citizen’s experience at the heart of the government’s forthcoming Green Paper on policing. I am clear that we need to be alive to the challenges that different communities face in influencing their local police’s priorities but I am also clear, particularly as a constituency MP, that people can also be concerned about their own personal experience of dealing with the police.

I want to look, with you, at how the service can become truly ‘citizen focused’ in all that it does. That’s why I am so impressed by the results that the forces involved in OPERATION QUEST are seeing – in terms of re-thinking how we meet our policing priorities, how we solve problems and how we place a greater focus on customer satisfaction.

It strikes a real chord with me – not just because it’s the sort of approach I want to bring to my own role, but also because it seems to exemplify the effective, commonsense ways of working that I’ve seen strong women police officers show in their jobs over the years.

The Green paper: workforce modernisation

It is a mark of the unique place that policing holds in our society that I can stand here today, as the latest in a long succession of Home Secretaries, and assert with total confidence my pride in British policing.

In your daily work, you and your colleagues are continuing the fine traditions of policing in our country: ever-professional, and always leading the way in tackling the ever-evolving challenges of criminality.

Across the world, others look to you for leadership and guidance, best practice and support. And our collective thinking about the future of policing took a further step forward earlier this month with the publication of Sir Ronnie Flanagan’s review of policing.

Ronnie has added his weight to the key issues of reducing unnecessary bureaucracy and improving business processes. These are central to how we make the most of your talents as police officers, and how we more readily unlock your potential in the future.

Having carefully considered the issues, Ronnie has made specific recommendations on how we can free up more police time – through reform of Stop and Account, for example, and through the radical new approach to crime recording being piloted by Staffordshire and other forces.

In taking forward Sir Ronnie’s work, the Green Paper we publish later this Spring will set out our proposals for how we can do more – for officers and members of the public alike – to improve policing practices.

The Green Paper will consult on how we equip the service for 21st century policing. For me, that means setting out a clear statement of intent in three areas:

how we can develop the professional resource management and leadership capability and capacity we need, right across the workforce;
how technology, alongside reform of working practices, can help to liberate officers to concentrate on where their professional strengths lie; and
how the drive to improve equality and diversity in policing is core to our aims – by supporting innovation through the best mix of talent and experience; by keeping pace with the need for flexible working; and by ensuring that policing is properly able to respond to the wider society which it serves, and of which it is part.

The Green Paper is our opportunity to explain the value we place on strong and inclusive police leadership. This means leadership right through the service from Chief Constable and Chief Officer level, right the way through to sergeants and supervisory staff who lead the most people day to day.

This will draw on work done by Peter Fahy and Angela O’Connor of NPIA on the leadership strategy for the police service, and closely link to Jane Stitchbury’s HMIC work on frontline supervision.

You, as senior women leading policing, have a vital role to play in enabling the police service to meet the challenges of the 21st century. You can, and should, play a central role in the future of the police service - supporting the changes at the top, and driving them forward on the ground to reduce crime and make Britain safer.

And I will always welcome and encourage your contribution to these aims, and your representations on any issues that you want to see addressed in order to support you in delivering better policing.

Women in Policing

Women are playing leading roles throughout policing – and while the direction of travel may not always be as fast as we want, more women are reaching points of leadership, seniority and influence with the police.

You will be familiar with the figures. There are more women joining the force; more women reaching Chief Super; more women reaching the ACPO ranks.

But they are doing so from a comparatively low base – fewer than 1 in 4 officers is a woman – and we should not lose sight of the need for further progress.

I know that many of you are already involved in working with our policing partners to support women:

Through national programmes and tailored in-force training, the NPIA’s Positive Action Leadership Programme is helping to encourage the take-up of development and promotion opportunities
Alongside its work to improve employment practices and career prospects for women, I know that the BAWP is also working with the NPIA on a ‘Good Practice’ document to highlight the successful activities and positive action that forces are taking, and linking this good work to the aims of ‘Gender Agenda 2’ initiative.
And, as you have been hearing at this conference, the National Senior Careers Advisory Service (NSCAS) has been working over the past two years to support ACPO and senior officers and staff in strengthening leadership capacity, so that we have a big enough pool of talent to meet the challenges of the future.

As one of its key goals, NSCAS is specifically tackling the under-representation of women at ACPO level, with more support for them to access advice in order to develop and progress their careers.

Quite rightly, NSCAS is developing a strong reputation within the service, increasingly recognised as a place where senior officers and staff can take time out to focus on their own professional development and improve their effectiveness in the workplace.

My guess is that many of the people in this room will have registered with NSCAS and are working with its Development Advisers – 50 of the existing 250 clients are women, and an initiative that NPIA launched last year encouraged a further 31 of you to register with NSCAS.

Your experience as senior women in policing is critical in developing future polices – such as the Leadership Strategy that NPIA, HMIC, ACPO and the Home Office is developing.

And we are now considering how we can make the most of your views in the corridors of Whitehall. The Women in Policing Steering Group chaired by Tony McNulty has taken on some important issues – including on gender equality schemes, flexible working guidance, and uniforms – and the Green Paper provides us with a good opportunity to revitalise these efforts.

Conclusion

In conclusion, then, I hope I have set out for you today my thinking on how the roles of all those involved in policing – women and men, officers and staff – will continue to change and develop as policing continues to evolve and improve to focus on our citizens’ needs.

I suspect that I do not need to tell any of you that the service has come a long way. And I am sure you will agree that in some areas we still have a long way to go.

But it is clear to me that the future of policing is inconceivable without more and more women in more and more senior positions.

Your skills and your talents are crucial to the vision of responsive ‘people first’ policing that I have set out today – and with your support and persistence I am confident we can together break through the glass ceilings, avoid falling off the glass cliffs and most importantly make a real difference to the communities we serve.

Thank you.

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