Changing methodology
Introduction
The change in inspection methodology planned since the appointment of Mr Paddy Tomkins as HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary for Scotland in March 2007 includes replacing the 5 year cycle of primary and review inspections of forces and the former common police services with a system of annual self assessment.
The introduction of a lighter touch, risk-based scrutiny model will use recognised service standards and the Scottish Policing Performance Framework in a more focused approach that should identify significant policing issues, options for improvement, and good practice. The main means of achieving this for individual forces will be a quality improvement framework which police forces and police services will use for self assessment within their established planning and performance regimes. In this way these organisations themselves will decide on the priorities for improvement and action while HMICS will be in a position to look at both individual force and service self assessments and all of these together in order to pinpoint difficulties or concerns which are either confined to one organisation or common to several. This will mean that HMICS inspection responsibilities can be undertaken in a smarter and more proportionate manner and that Inspectorate staff can concentrate on undertaking the kind of thematic inspection which can add real value to the delivery of policing in Scotland
The model which will be used for annual force and service inspection has been developed in consultation with a reference group of key stakeholders. In developing this approach HMICS expects the police service in Scotland to develop and refine existing self assessment practices so that internal reflective practice becomes embedded. The ultimate goal of this approach is to make the Inspectorate's role an endorsement of the internal activity that is carried out. This approach is entirely in keeping with the emerging drive to reduce the effects of external scrutiny.
The self assessment products and other broad consultation with stakeholders will inform the selection of thematic inspection topics.
It is recognised that refining this model will take some time but we have already made a good start, initiating several short thematic inspections and identifying milestones for introducing a self assessment model which can be adopted by all forces. Alongside the development of this approach is the need to ensure that the service is inspecting itself against recognised standards. To that end work is underway to bring some order to the necessarily wide range of standards, guidance and instruction which have been developed by and for the police service over many years.
HMICS remains committed to the use of an inspection model that adds value to the quality of policing in Scotland, identifies and spreads good practice, reacts nimbly to emerging needs, and raises issues that require attention at local and national levels.
What have we done so far
To date HMICS has
What are we going to do next
- HMICS will continue to support police forces and police services to implement the self assessment model, refining and harmonising this in discussion with stakeholders.
- Complete the first round of thematic inspection activity.
Recommendations and Risk Management
In refining our approach to inspection we recognised that a legacy of outstanding recommendations remained from previous inspection activity. As part of the development of the new inspection model we decided that each of these should be re-visited to allow consideration of both the currency and relevance of the issues being considered. This has provided us with the opportunity to test and demonstrate our commitment towards a risk-based approach and has led to the refinement of a legacy list that will shortly be progressed with police forces, police services and partner agencies as appropriate. We will also be creating a new risk register to ensure we are prepared for all foreseeable eventualities.
Self assessment
HMICS has now settled on the model for this part of our inspection responsibility and it is therefore an appropriate time to provide an update on progress and on how the Inspectorate sees the process engaging with chief constables, police authorities/boards, and the Scottish Police Services Authority (SPSA). This update has already been provided to all chief constables and police authority/board conveners as well as the Chief Executive and Convener of the Scottish Police Services Authority.
Progress to date
In considering the options for a model of self assessment HMICS examined the systems currently in use and being developed in the public sector. These are:
Following exploratory work with all forces in Scotland, the Inspectorate identified that the most common self assessment model is the EFQM model. In a minority of forces there was little evidence of any structured self assessment in business planning cycles.
After careful consideration it has been decided to pursue the implementation of an EFQM based model, suitably adapted for the police service and accredited by Quality Scotland. It has also been decided that this is an interim measure with the intention of moving to the developing PSIF model when the police service has become more familiar with self assessment and the PSIF model has matured. It is hoped that an added benefit to this longer term approach will be that forces will be able either to dispense with the need for Investors in People and Charter Mark or reduce the resource commitment to obtaining these awards.
A small development group was formed with representation from HMICS, sample forces (Strathclyde, Grampian and Tayside), the project team of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland which is promoting the National Intelligence Model, and Quality Scotland. This group developed a questionnaire that aims to retain the benefits and balance of EFQM while also recognising the drivers of the National Intelligence Model, service standards and the Scottish Policing Performance Framework. The questionnaire is shorter than those used in the standard EFQM self assessment and that developed for PSIF.
This will mark a move away from the inspections previously carried out by HMIC, where a self assessment questionnaire was used as the basis for an inspection which involved extensive fieldwork.
Self assessment product
The primary users of self assessment will be the forces/services themselves. Having conducted their own assessments, we anticipate that each force and service will then either create a stand-alone action plan to address the areas most in need and capable of improvement, or absorb these in its annual strategic planning. In either case we would expect that forces and services will share both the self assessment report and the resultant plan with their authority/board (and the SPSA Board for those services governed by that Authority).
HMICS will also receive a copy of all the self assessment reports and resultant plans and will look quite closely at these, particularly in the first years of use. Considered alongside environmental scanning and nationally available performance information (from the Scottish Policing Performance Framework as well as the HMICS Annual Statistical return) this should allow us to:
- be assured of the integrity of the process;
- establish if the plans are consistent with expectation or whether further inspection is required;
- identify any common features which may merit further work at national level (e.g. a thematic inspection).
Whatever the case, HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary will communicate his judgement to both the relevant chief constable and police authority/board. For those support services provided by the SPSA, and for the SCDEA maintained by the SPSA, he will communicate with the Chief Executive and the SPSA Board. Only if required by the Scottish Ministers under Section 27 of the Police, Public Order and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2006, will HMICS inspect the SPSA itself.
We expect that, in the first two or three years, HMICS scrutiny of the self assessments may bring suggestions (or occasionally recommendations) from the Inspectorate to chief officers and their boards about areas for adjustment, but that these will lessen as we all become accustomed to the process.
We believe that this kind of self assessment also helps to address:
- the statutory duty of forces and police authorities/boards to practice and demonstrate best value
- HMICS' statutory power to inspect police authorities/boards on best value.
Service Standards
Our intention has always been that the self assessment process should be informed by a greater understanding and shared awareness of service standards for policing in Scotland, most of which already exist in some form or another. We recently shared the rationale for this in a very useful discussion with ACPOS office bearers and that reasoning is replicated here:
- Although there has been a Policing Charter in the past, service delivery standards have not been collectively identified internally or externally since then.
- The public and other police stakeholders are therefore generally unaware of what standards they can expect of police forces across Scotland when seeking service, and cannot be made aware if they do ask.
- ACPOS produces and adopts a wide range of guidance, policies, strategies, and protocols but does not:- store or index these in one repository; make them readily accessible to either the service or the public; follow a process for review; consider the body of documents as a whole to establish gaps or inconsistencies and contradictions.
- There are some important gaps in this range of documentation.
- Because of the above shortcomings there is a significant risk that the kinds of police service delivery which ought to be consistent across Scotland are not.
- In order to create a virtuous cycle of collaboration between HMICS, the police service, the Scottish Government and police authorities/boards, HMICS needs to inspect against common standards which have been agreed by the service itself, not imposed by the Inspectorate, and when necessary HMICS needs to be able to point to standards which may need to change.
We are continuing to work with ACPOS to address these issues and are confident that we will arrive at a point, over a period of time, where there is much more clarity about what needs to be consistent in service to the public, and therefore a body of common standards. Amongst other things, this will enable HMICS to inspect forces and services against standards created and owned by the service itself.
Both these developments conform with the emphasis on self assessment against common standards advocated by the Crerar Review.
Current developments
The self assessment questionnaire has now been developed and subsequently accredited by Quality Scotland. Scoring and usage guidelines for this are also now being compiled.
The SPSA has contributed considerably to the training programme for implementation of self assessment, and achieved efficiencies in the process by gaining accreditation as the single provider (thus not only saving multiple membership fees for Quality Scotland but also absorbing the first year's training costs which will be a real saving for forces).
Progress on self assessment has been explained to the ACPOS Performance Management Business Area and to all force/service HMICS liaison officers, as well as those heads of the appropriate force departments who attended a meeting with HMICS on 12 December 2007.
Awareness sessions at the Scottish Police College have been arranged and advertised to forces to enable an even broader range of staff to develop an understanding of the process.
A training plan for practitioners in forces has been developed and will run from the end of January to the end of May 2008. Implementation of the self assessment process in forces and services will then be undertaken during June 2008 to fit in with NIM and business/strategic planning cycles, and the overall force self assessments will be due for submission to HMICS in November 2008.
Conclusion
Once in place, the self assessment regime, as well as assisting HMICS in discharging its responsibilities, should do several things which will be of value to forces, the SPSA and their respective police authorities or boards:
- Provide most forces/services and police authorities/boards with better information about their own performance and practice than they have at present, feeding in to their business planning and annual NIM cycles.
- Reduce the so-called 'burden of inspection' by requiring less of forces than the old Primary Inspection followed by two Review Inspections within 5 years. (Provided the performance information platform project, by allowing HMICS direct access to appropriate data, eventually replaces the need for the Annual Statistical Return, then the imposition on forces will be reduced even further.)
- Assist in meeting force and authority/board responsibilities under best value.
- Increase ownership of internal management procedures.
- Allow independent comparison for local and national government.
- Facilitate cross-fertilisation of ideas and encourage simultaneous improvement in every force.
Eventually this should all be supported by a core set of common service standards - which will also provide real benefits to the public users of the police service. The end result should be that communities across Scotland benefit from continually improving police forces and services which achieve those improvements via an appropriate balance of local and national accountability.