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Chapter four: HMICS in 2008-09

As we enter the second year of our new inspection regime, we are conscious of the impact of change on the service as a whole. We remain committed to ensuring that the public receives the highest standards of service and the best possible value. Therefore we will continue to implement our new arrangements, developing and refining these where necessary to achieve an optimum balance between the inevitable demands imposed by any form of scrutiny and the benefits that accrue from thorough exploration, reflection and re-focusing of effort. In response to some initial feedback from our stakeholders we intend to make some adjustments to our work plan and to refine some of our methods. This will ensure that we can continue our inspection activity with the minimum of disruption, while maintaining the purpose and integrity of our statutory responsibility. However, we will conduct additional inspection activity as necessary or where directed to do so by Scottish Ministers.

Recommendations and the results of self-assessment

In addition to the as yet unresolved recommendations of previous reports, our recent inspection activity has generated a number of new recommendations. Our revised process requires forces and services to consider how they might best respond to these and frame improvement plans accordingly.

With the support of the Cabinet Secretary for Justice we now also require that police forces and services inform their respective boards/authorities of our recommendations, and that the latter in turn approve the service improvement plans submitted to them. The same procedure applies to the self-assessment process. With the first round of self-assessment activity due to take place during the summer of 2008, we would expect to receive all completed reports and action plans before the end of the year. This will allow us to conduct a validation exercise, identifying service-wide issues for further action and examples of good practice that we will then promulgate. I will be able to report more fully on the impact of this in my next annual report, although I acknowledge that it may take time for self-assessment to become fully established and embedded.

Future thematic inspection activity

During 2008 we will undertake a further series of thematic inspections. A number of these will be carried out jointly with other inspection agencies or scrutiny bodies.

Further information about our current planned activity is outlined in table 1.

Table 1 - HMICS work plan: 1 April 2008 - 31 March 2009

The following table outlines our activity during the coming year. It has been updated to reflect the state of activity at the time of writing.

Our detailed work plan will further develop as the year progresses and the most current version will be available on our website at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Justice/Police/15403/Prospectus

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