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Strategic planning
5. Strategic planning is the process by which organisations determine their future direction. It can take various forms, most of which are constructed around three component stages: assess the current internal and external situation of an organisation; identify and prioritise the goals necessary to get to where it wants to be; and, establish what actions and resources are needed to achieve them. Implementation and review stages typically complete the cycle.
6. It is not our intention to elaborate on how each force conducts its strategic planning. More detail on this can be found in our 2005 report on performance management in the police service 7. But in order to appreciate how public consultation might fit into the process, we describe some of the common underpinning methods and drivers below.
Evidential analysis
7. Across the Scottish police service the main planning tool is the national intelligence model ( NIM). Essentially a business model, the NIM assimilates information that allows managers to manage risk, determine priorities and allocate resources. The model itself stresses the important contribution of consultation evidence - from voluntarily supplied local community information to the results of formal perception surveys - to inform planning, and lists communities and members of the public among its primary 'source assets'.
8. One of the outputs to emerge from this process is the strategic assessment. This provides an overview of current and long-term matters involving criminality or community safety, on the basis of evidential analysis. Emanating in turn from this are control strategies, establishing longer-term strategic priorities and feeding into strategic planning. Priorities identified in this way have traditionally tended to focus on operational objectives around crime, although the NIM can and should be applied more widely, to other aspects, of community safety and partnership working for example. Depending on the geographical level pinpointed, priorities may be directed at a single division or below (level 1), involve one or more forces (level 2), or be the responsibility of all forces in Scotland and beyond (level 3).
Discrete drivers
9. In addition to these analytically derived priorities, police forces and services are obliged to respond to other priorities and recommendations, as follows:
- those national outcomes of the Scottish Government that are relevant to policing;
- priorities identified by the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland ( ACPOS); and
- the findings of performance audits, inspections and self-assessment.
10. It is pleasing to note the work being done to co-ordinate and rationalise the various priorities under the Scottish Policing Performance Framework ( SPPF) 8. The SPPF contains a series of high-level objectives and outcome measures, including the Accounts Commission statutory performance indicators. Though not all are articulated as priorities per se, they are intended to reflect the main areas for activity and improvement for forces and common police services.
11. Prevailing policy and legislation will also undoubtedly influence how forces direct their efforts and budgets. For example, it is the police who must by law investigate financial crimes even when other agencies 9 report these to the procurator fiscal. There are operational and moral imperatives too, that they must and will act upon. Few strategic assessments or public surveys will single out missing persons, for instance, as a high-risk area for policing. And yet the public would hardly expect fewer resources to be spent investigating those that do come to their attention. Similarly, forces spend a lot of money on the medical care of prisoners, not because it is a recognised priority but simply because they have to 10.
12. Performance reporting against priorities typically looks at what has been achieved at the level of individual force. In practice, outcomes are dependent upon the actions of territorial divisions and/or departments. It is in divisions that the picture, particularly for operational priorities, becomes more complex. When not responding directly to calls from the public, the NIM is the main tasking and co-ordinating tool for divisional activity (although, as our recent report on police officer productivity 11 suggests, this is not always adhered to). Thus, activities here are driven by priorities emanating from both national frameworks and force strategies, as well as from their own assessments of local need and demand.
13. Though community planning partnerships did not fall within the scope of our inspection, we did visit the East Ayrshire partnership early on in our own consultative phase. One of the more dynamic groups in Scotland, its consultation methods included a residents' survey, a residents' panel, four local community planning forums, a children and young persons' forum and a diversities/equalities forum. The local police were, we were told, very active and supportive of its work. We also invited comment from all 32 Scottish councils on their experiences with the police. Their replies (e.g. Highland, East Lothian and Dundee councils) spoke well of forces, and their commitment to partnership working and to joint consultation.
14. The potential for the interests of forces and their divisions to diverge is clear, the situation lately further complicated by the advent of single outcome agreements ( SOAs) between councils and Scottish Government. The initial SOA development and self-assessment toolkit advised that development ' start from evidence of the issues and challenges within the local area'. Subsequent guidance from the Improvement Service states that community engagement will play a key part in this, and that ' SOAs should reflect the priorities in community plans ... developed through consultation with communities.' However, as COSLA was still drawing up its Community Empowerment Action Plan on the public engagement element of the process at the time of writing, we remain unaware of what shape this will take. In the meantime, we believe that our recommendations will put forces in a better position to respond to what does emerge as well as help to enhance the standard of available evidence.
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