Police Performance Assessments 2007/08

Since 2004/05 the Home Office and HMIC have jointly conducted a periodic, strategic level performance review of each Home Office police force in England and Wales, using quantitative Statutory Performance Indicators (SPIs) and qualitative inspection assessments.

Following the publication of the Policing Green Paper, ‘From the Neighbourhood to the National: Policing our Communities Together’, HMIC will have a more strengthened and refocused role with regard to police performance assessments. Qualitative assessments of force performance and comparative assessments under the Assessment of Policing and Community Safety (APACS) framework will remain but the Home Office will no longer make graded assessments of performance.

PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT 2007/08

The 2007/08 performance assessment information includes:

1. Statutory and local performance indicators, with comparator data;
2. Assessment of three HMIC inspections; and
3. Audit Commission PURE.

The 2007/08 results for the statutory and local performance indicators from the Policing Plan 2007/08 are outlined in Appendix 1. Northumbria’s performance data is shown against comparator data from a range of sources including most similar family performance, national averages, Home Office targets and economically active population in 2001 census.

From 2007/08 HMIC has focused their inspections on areas which pose a major risk of harm to individuals focusing less on high volume, low risk issues. Results of the HMIC inspections carried out in Northumbria in 2007/08 are shown below.

The Audit Commission carry out an annual PURE. This involves auditors assessing whether police authorities and forces are achieving value for money, effective financial management and good standards of governance and accountability. Auditors make judgements based on a number of high-level key lines of enquiry. The 2007/08 PURE scores for Northumbria are shown below.

ANALYSIS OF PERFORMANCE 2007/08

Northumbria’s performance against statutory performance indicators overall was good and with regard to citizen focus all indicators measuring satisfaction with service delivery show improved performance. The statutory indicators where performance is numerically worse than the comparators are listed below:

1. SPI 4a: Comparative risk of personal crime (compared to most similar family);
2. SPI 3b: Comparative satisfaction of minority ethnic groups (compared to satisfaction of white population);
   
3. SPI 3C: Parity of arrests arising from stop and search between ethnic groups (compared to white population);
   
4. SPI 3d: Parity of detections for violent crime between ethnic groups (compared to white population) - this indicator still shows a difference between white and minority ethnic groups but Northumbria did achieve the target to reduce the gap by 2%; and
   
5. 13a: Officer sickness absence (compared to national average).

In relation to the minority ethnic officer recruitment (compared to economically active population in 2001 census), the Home Office published figure is 0.6% but the actual final figure in 07/08 for Northumbria is 2.4%, the same as the comparator data and slightly better than 2006/07.

Two of the four local performance indicators selected from the Local Policing Plan 2007/08 achieved target, the following two did not:

1. Total number of anti-social behaviour incidents that were youth-related.
2. Sanction detection rate for criminal damage offences.

In Northumbria all three HMIC inspection areas have been assessed as ‘meeting the standard’.

The PURE assessment score of 4 out of 4 has been successfully maintained from 2006/07. This assesses Northumbria Police authority and force as performing strongly, well above minimum standards.

These results and those of other forces across the country are published on Home Office website

Appendix

Audit Commission Police Use of Resources Evaluation Assessment 2007-08

Statutory & Local Performance Indicator Data