Agenda item

To receive the Highlight and Performance Report.

Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Philip Wilkinson, OBE, MPhil, gave an update about the progress made towards the targets in his Police and Crime Plan, in particular efforts to reduce waiting times for 101 calls. In order to give the Panel greater insight, the PCC gave a brief overview of the process followed in the Crime and Communication Centre to respond to 101 calls. Key points included:

·       The PCC clarified a number of acronyms in the report including, CCHQ (Centre Call Handler) and CRIB (Crime Recording Incident Bureau). He explained that call handler would triage information and pass it on to the police for an immediate response if required. Incidents requiring further investigation would be passed to the CRIB team.

·       The PCC was pleased to report that, in the last two years, the response time to 101 calls had fallen from 28 minutes to around eight minutes, although this often fluctuated with demand. Greater automation was being introduced to reduce the amount of typing that call handlers would have to do when transferring information. Members of the CRIB team would also call the public back so that they were not required to stay on a call for an unnecessary length of time.

·       Progression was available for call handlers, as they were able to join the CRIB team. The PCC reported that in the last three months, 14 call handlers had gone on to become police officers.

During the discussion, points included:

·       The Panel welcomed the improvement in response times for victims and further efforts to improve efficiency.

·       It was confirmed that the CRIB team were highly trained in investigative processes.

·       The public were notified that they would be called back, so they were not left on hold for longer than necessary.

·       When asked about why response times to attend incidents were higher in Swindon than the rest of the county, the PCC noted that response times were a combination of geographical and manpower issues. The Panel noted that they would welcome further information on the differentials in response times at their next meeting.

·       When asked about whether similar efficiencies implemented to improve the response times to 101 calls could also be applied to online reporting, the Chief Executive of the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC), Naji Darwish, noted that online reporting was a national system. It had the same information requirements compared with speaking to an operator. The PCC observed that a number of forces had raised this issue with the police minister to see how technology could improve reporting.

·       The Panel stated that they would welcome text appearing when the public received a call back from the CRIB team, so that they were aware who was calling them and to make clear that it was not a nuisance ‘phone call.

·       The PCC was asked about whether there were multi agency toolkits to share information about individuals who committed persistent low-level offences. The PCC explained that persistent offenders were known to neighbourhood teams and that bespoke responses could be put in place by working with different agencies, including local authorities and by using commissioned services. 

·       It was confirmed that the 25 percent reduction in fatal collisions in 2023 was benchmarked against the 2022 figures. The PCC noted that over 11,000 speeding sanctions had been issued in 2023 and that they had procured three speed enforcement vehicles.

·       It was noted that the positive outcome rate for rapes and serious sexual offences had improved from below two percent to around 12 percent, meaning that Wiltshire had gone from one of the worst performing forces in the country to in the top quarter of best performing. The PCC noted that there was still a long way to go and that extra training was being put in place to tackle rape and sexual offences as well as domestic abuse.

·       It was confirmed that all of the historic cases relating to Clare’s Law (Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme) which allowed individuals to request information about their partner’s history of abusive behaviour, had now been processed significantly and that the force were close to completing all rectification work.

·       The Chief Executive of the OPCC explained that changes to legislation in 2020 had significantly lowered the threshold for formally expressing dissatisfaction with the police. He noted that a complaints team within the OPCC had taken responsibility for responding to and triaging complaints and that they had been able to satisfactorily resolve 85 percent of cases, without the complaint being taken further. The majority of cases related to contact with the victim. The number of complaints nationally under the original threshold had remained similar. The PCC noted that there had been a large backlog of complaints when he took office and bringing responsibility for complaint handling into the OPCC, at the Chief Executive’s suggestion, had significantly reduced the backlog.