Police Foundation - Written evidence (FFF0051)
Response to The House of Lords Select Committee on Public Services Call for Evidence on Designing a public services workforce fit for the future
Introduction
- The Police Foundation is the only independent think tank in the UK focussed exclusively on improving policing. Our mission is to generate evidence and develop ideas that deliver better policing and a safer society. In March 2022 we published the final report of our Strategic Review of Policing in England and Wales, arguably the most comprehensive report on the future of the police service since the Royal Commission on the Police in 1962.
- Our final report makes substantial recommendations for developing the police workforce, including in terms of its skills profile, learning and development arrangements, leadership, and wellbeing. We regard these as among the key strategic capabilities required to address the public safety challenges of the coming decades. More broadly, we conclude that the police service should be seen as one part of a wider and more explicitly designed public safety system, with a primary focus on preventing crime and harm. This has additional implications for the wider public service workforce.
- We have identified five questions (and sub-questions) from your Call for Evidence with particular relevance to our Review findings and have structured our response around these. All data and evidence cited is referenced within the report, available at: https://www.policingreview.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/srpew_final_report.pdf.
Summary
- In summary we argue that:
- Policing needs a stronger strategic centre with an enhanced capacity for horizon scanning and workforce planning. The College of Policing should be given new powers to direct police forces to participate in national workforce development programmes.
- Police Continual Professional Development (CPD) needs an overhaul. A new Learning and Development Fund should be created and used to drive an uplift in the quality of police training, police officers should be given guaranteed on-the-job learning time and be made subject to a License to Practise, contingent on periodic demonstration of new learning.
- To attract the most able, talented, and motivated recruits, policing needs to nurture a strong value proposition as an agency of authentic public service and a force for positive social change. This links to wider questions about public confidence and police legitimacy.
- To retain a healthy and motivated workforce, additional measures are needed to promote officer and staff wellbeing. Police officers should receive ongoing clinical monitoring and support, and more needs to be done to help officers process trauma.
- Recruiting a more diverse workforce is essential for police legitimacy and effectiveness. We propose new legislation to allow time limited positive discrimination.
Q.1 (a) What is an appropriate approach to long-term planning for workforce needs and demand?
- Police workforce planning currently rests in the hands of 43 separate, territorial police forces. Although central government decisions and funding have a substantial bearing on the size if the police workforce and the College of Policing has some system-wide functions (for example in setting the curriculum for initial officer training, and (recently), in running national recruitment processes), decisions about recruitment, skills and training are largely taken at the local level, based on local (and often pressing, short-term) needs.
- This has consequences for the preparedness of the service as a whole for exceptional, national demands. It also means that insufficient attention is paid to emerging and likely future trends and their strategic workforce implications. For instance, looking to the future operating environment, we identify skills gaps in three key areas: relational skills (including communication, co-production, victim care, and awareness of trauma, mental health, and neurodiversity), investigatory skills (where there is currently a national shortage of nearly 7,000 detectives, and growing demand and complexity) and digital skills (particularly in relation to digital forensics and data science). Our recommendations for addressing these include changes to the National Police Curriculum, the introduction of mandatory professional minimum standards in core competency areas, a pay supplement and direct entry programme for detectives, establishing standing ‘call in’ arrangements with the private sector, and strengthened career pathways for ‘allied’ policing professions.
- Additionally, while there are good reasons for policing to retain a strong local dimension, we believe that the service also needs a much more powerful strategic centre, including an enhanced ability to ‘horizon scan’ and undertake (national level) strategic workforce planning. To do this, a new Crime and Policing Strategy Unit (with a national performance monitoring and horizon scanning remit) should be created within the Home Office, it’s work should inform a much more detailed Strategic Policing Requirement setting out the capabilities the Home Secretary expects the police service to deliver. The College of Policing should be given additional responsibility for looking ahead and developing plans to ensure an adequate supply of appropriately skilled people to meet future needs and the expectations of government. To enable delivery, the College should also be given new powers to direct Chief Constables to participate in national workforce development schemes.
Q.1 (b) how should current training adapt, not just at the point of employees’ entry into the workforce but throughout their careers?
- Initial police training is going through a period of transformation, as the College of Policing embeds the Police Education Qualification Framework (PEQF) in the context of Operation Uplift (the government plan to recruit 20,000 police officers between 2021 and 2023). First introduced in 2016, the PEQF launched three new training pathways which require new recruits to either have a university degree or obtain one during their probationary period. It is too soon to judge the success of these new routes; however, we support the principle that police officers should have access to higher learning, not just to accredit their skills, but to gain problem solving and cognitive skills that are increasingly important in a complex operating environment.
- During our Review we heard considerable concern about the state of police learning and development after initial training. Continuous Professional Development (CPD) is too often viewed as an inconvenient abstraction from duties, rather than an essential investment in the workforce. One recent study characterised police training as “transactional” and “reactive”, and as being directed towards immediate problems (such as responding to new legislation), rather than changing the way officer do their job or raising their skill set. Staff surveys show that more officers are dissatisfied than satisfied with the training they receive and Professional Development Review (PDR) processes are typically seen as a “bureaucratic exercise”.
- To strengthen the culture of CPD in policing, the service needs to provide more high- quality learning opportunities and better engage police professionals in their own development. Instead of being seen as an abstraction, learning needs to be woven into the flow of work. To achieve this the Home Office should establish a Learning and Development Fund, administered by College of Policing. To receive funding, police forces would have to demonstrate that their training programmes meet required standards. There should also be a minimum set of hours per year reserved for each officer’s learning and development, as exists (for instance) in the medical professions.
- Additionally, our Review recommends that the government legislate to introduce a Licence to Practise for all police officers, to raise professional standards, encourage career long learning and promote a culture in which professionals take responsibility for their own development. Under such a scheme, every police officer would be required to revalidate their licence every five years by demonstrating professional learning, (e.g., by achieving relevant qualifications, passing an interview, or presenting a portfolio of achievements). Any police officer who failed this assessment would receive further support and mentoring, however after successive failures, would be removed from the register and no longer be able to practice as a police officer.
Q.4 (a) How might the public sector become more attractive as an employer, particularly in comparison with the private sector?
- There is no shortage of people who want to be police officers; police recruitment campaigns routinely attract large numbers of applications. However, the service does face a challenge – particularly looking to the future – in positioning itself as the career of choice for people from a diverse range of backgrounds, and with necessary mix of skills, experiences, and perspectives that the police service requires.
- Like other parts of the public sector, policing will be unable to compete financially with the private sector. Instead, the service needs to nurture and promote a strong value proposition to its potential future workforce, as an agency of authentic public service and a force for positive social change.
- In relation to this, we highlight the success of the Police Now scheme, which has recruited and trained over 1,500 new, high-calibre police officers since 2015 through its National Graduate Leadership Programme (NGLP) and National Detective Programme (NDP) and has been particularly successful in attracting women and those from ethnic minorities and deprived backgrounds. Police Now attribute their success to the emphasis placed within their marketing activity on social impact and the public service elements of the profession (over action-oriented, crime fighting), as well as their use of role models, and to offering early leadership opportunities.
- More broadly these considerations highlight the intrinsic long-term connections between workforce capability and issues of public confidence, trust, and legitimacy. Recently deteriorating levels of trust and confidence in policing are not only concerning in themselves but have real implications for the attractiveness of the profession to talented and appropriately motivated individuals. The Strategic Review offers 14 recommendations aimed at improving police legitimacy, beginning with a renewed institutional commitment to policing by consent and the creation of a national strategic plan which should include reinvestment in neighbourhood policing, reforms to stop and search policy and a programme of work to embed the police Code of Ethics. All are highly relevant to workforce development and recruitment, as part of a wider imperative to nurture public co-operation and participation in the delivery of policing.
Q.4 (b) How might it become attractive enough to retain workers throughout their careers while maintaining a level of turnover that brings fresh ideas to organisations?
- Policing is currently focused on recruitment, but retention will soon be a key concern as forces are seeing proportionately more officers and staff leaving early. We highlight the role of low morale, poor wellbeing, and unmanageable workloads in driving these losses.
- A healthy, happy, and motivated workforce needs to be seen as a strategic capability for policing, however there are real and long-standing problem with the levels of sickness and poor morale within the service. Police officers report poorer wellbeing than the general population. They have greater risk of contracting heart disease, diabetes, cancer and of dying early. Police officers also report higher than average levels of anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), chronic fatigue and chronic severe stress, which can exacerbate these physical conditions. Over the past decade there have been increases in the numbers of officers taking long-term sick leave for physical or psychological illness. The Police Federation’s annual Pay and Morale Surveys shows far more officers report low morale than high. Causes of poor wellbeing include repeated exposure to trauma, poor working conditions, perceived lack of autonomy, poor leadership, and the occupational culture.
- Several recent attempts have been made (for example through the National Police Wellbeing Service) to promote wellbeing within the service. The Blue Light Wellbeing Framework was launched in 2017 to provide a standard for emergency services employers and to promote understanding of, and investment in, prevention, early detection, and rehabilitation. Yet, given the scale of health problems and low morale, we believe that further steps are necessary. First, given the high levels of trauma within the workforce, all police officers and staff should have access to on-going clinical support tailored to their specific needs. In practice this would mean an annual (physical and mental) health check and appropriate ongoing occupational health support. Second, police officers need more dedicated time to process traumatic experiences. The College of Policing should develop national standards to address unresolved trauma. This should include the use of regular debriefing sessions. Training in mental resilience should become a core part of both initial police training and continuing professional development. Frontline supervisors should be trained to recognise signs of trauma and support those who are struggling. Finally, it is worth reflecting on the wider drivers of poor morale. Many of these are linked to outdated technology, poor management practices and a sense that the police are struggling against the odds, with a fraught relationship with the public, media, and government. It needs to be recognised that efforts to address these wider issues also have implications for officer wellbeing, performance, and staff retention.
6) How can providers of public services recruit a more diverse workforce? How should they improve their recruitment of BAME people, people with disabilities, older people and people who use public services and live in the communities that providers serve?
- As we set out above, there are important links between the way the police service is perceived by the public (its trustworthiness and extent to which it viewed as a force for good with society) and its ability to attract and retain a suitably skilled and motivated workforce. This is particularly true for minority communities who are under-represented within the police workforce and have often had a less positive relationship with the police; (Black Caribbean people, for example, are 23 percentage points less likely to say that the police can be trusted than the white British majority). Efforts to improve police legitimacy should specifically address the drivers of these deficits, for example through reforms to the way stop and search is used. Additionally, we believe that specific and radical reform is required to improve the diversity of the police workforce, so that it is more representative of the communities it serves. There are good reasons to believe that doing so will help counter discrimination and promote innovative thinking within the service and we consider it a fundamental building block for improving both the legitimacy and effectiveness of the police.
- We note that, in terms of gender, the proportion of police officers who are female increased by 7 percentage points between 2010 and 2021, to 32 percent. While this compares favourably to many other nations, at current rates it will take another 20 years to achieve parity of gender representation.
- In terms of race and ethnicity[1], the proportion of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) police officers has increased from 2.2 per cent in 2000 to 7.6 per cent in 2021, however this is substantially below the 17.6 per cent that would be required to be representative of the English and Welsh population. We also note that this increase has mainly been the result of more Asian/Asian British recruits (and those of ‘mixed’ ethnicity) joining the service; the proportion of Black police officers has barely changed. Operation Uplift has had negligible impact on BME representation, and we consider this a missed opportunity. Taking account of projected growth in the BME population, at the current rate of change, representation is unlikely to be achieved for many decades.
- This slow progress comes despite decades of attention to minority representation in the police service, including following reports by Lord Scarman (1981) and Macpherson (1998) (the latter set targets for representation by 2009, all which were missed). This indicates that sufficient change will not be achieved without radical policy reform. We draw attention to the success of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which used a form of positive discrimination to increase Catholic representation from 8 per cent in 2001 to 30 per cent in 2011. Under the scheme, all candidates who passed a standardised recruitment process were placed in a pool, from which (whenever six or more similar vacancies arose), an equal number of Catholic and Protestant candidates would be selected.
- We recommend that the government should develop a plan for improving the diversity of the police workforce which includes setting targets for female and ethnic minority recruitment for each police force. To facilitate this the government should legislate to allow police forces to introduce time-limited positive discrimination policies until such time as these targets are achieved.
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