Workshop 2:Sorting out scrutiny boundaries

Police Reform and Community Safety ConferenceTuesday, 29 January 2013

Tim YoungAssociate, Local Government Information Unit

Workshop 2 - Sorting out scrutiny boundaries

Purpose:This workshop will focus on the division of responsibilities between crime and disorder scrutiny committees (at the local level) and a police and crime panel (at force level) and what might be needed to make the relationships work well

A Police and Crime Commissioner’s role:

• Securing an efficient and effective police force for their area

• Producing and consulting on a five year Police and Crime Plan that sets out local policing priorities

• Setting the annual policing precept • Appointing the Chief Constable

(CC) and holding them to account • Co-operating with local community

safety partners and funding community safety activity to achieve the Police and Crime Plan’s objectives

PCCs and Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs)

• PCCs: not members of or responsible authorities on existing CSPs, but mutual duty to cooperate

• PCCs must have regard to the CSPs’ priorities when planning – and CSPs must have regard to a PCC’s Policing and Crime plan

• PCCs can require reports from CSPs on their work

• PCCs have powers to convene meetings with all CSPs in the force area to discuss strategic priorities

PCCs and community safety activity

• All funding which currently goes to CSPs will in the future go directly to the PCC

• In 2013-14, PCCs will receive funding from the new, non-ringfenced Community Safety Fund to commission services to support crime, drugs and community safety priorities

• PCCs will be able to make crime and disorder reduction grants to any organisation or person in their area

• CSPs will therefore not be automatic recipients of PCC funding

PCCs and Community Safety Fund allocations (in £millions)

The Police and Crime Panel (PCP)

• A new body with statutory functions

• Established to ensure some local accountability for the Police and Crime Commissioner

• The Act says the PCP must exercise its functions with a view to supporting the effective exercise of the PCC’s functions

• So ‘support and challenge’ - a scrutiny role

PCP responsibilities include:

• Contributing to the development of the PCC’s Police and Crime Plan

• Reviewing the PCC’s proposed precept

• Holding the PCC to account for their annual report at a public meeting

• Reviewing and scrutinising PCC decisions

So a PCP will be interested in:

a PCC’s strategy for community safety how and by how much it is funded

how it is to be commissioned and delivered how successfully it’s delivered

Local authority scrutiny of crime and disorder partnerships

• Each local authority is still required (by Police & Justice Act 2006) to scrutinise crime and disorder partnerships at least annually

• Demarcation becomes more complicated as a PCC takes over funding of community safety work

• Aim should be to avoid duplication and ensure a co-ordinated approach to scrutiny of community safety, at the strategic and local levels

Emerging lessons from PCPs’ work

• For a PCP, no matter what your ambitions, you cannot cover everything – less may be more

• Need to operate at a strategic level taking an overview of a PCC’s work, policing requirements and priorities

• Community safety: a PCP’s interest is in how strategic priorities translate into operational action at the local level

• Need to liaise with local OSCs for that information

Liaising and working with local OSCs

• Provides intelligence on local community safety/crime issues and concerns

• Enables a PCP to understand PCC’s strategic direction and how decisions are impacting locally

• Can help assess how the PCC is co-operating with local community safety partners and funding activity to achieve Police and Crime Plan objectives

• Enables local OSCs to escalate issues that cannot be solved by local action

• Can help PCP to aggregate issues that are common across the force area

How might this/is this being done?

• ‘Twin-hatted’ councillors, sitting on the PCP and their county and/or local crime and disorder scrutiny committee (eg Gloucestershire)

• Through scrutiny officers’ liaison• Sharing and co-ordinating work

programmes• Responding to requests for information• Passing on issues to where they can be dealt with

most appropriately• Flagging up issues of mutual interest• Formal protocols (e.g. Leics County Council OSC and

PCP; and North Yorks PCP and LA Scrutiny Committees with Community Safety remits)

Other scrutiny links to consider• Health scrutiny’s new relationships

with Health and Wellbeing Boards, Clinical Commissioning Groups, Healthwatch and Public Health

• Links between health issues, policing and crime and disorder, e.g. drug and alcohol abuse; domestic violence, safeguarding issues

• Issues that need more than a policing response (e.g. binge drinking, violence, and A & E admissions)

Resources

• Draft Protocol between the Police and Crime Panel and the Leicestershire County Council Scrutiny Commission at http://goo.gl/rQeii (pp23-27)

• North Yorkshire Police and Crime Panel, Links between Police and Crime Panel and Crime and Disorder Overview and Scrutiny Committees (25 October 2012) at http://goo.gl/R1mp0

• The LGA’s Police and Crime Panel Support and Wider Networking Group provides a network for all those involved with Police and Crime Panels or with a keen interest in this area. Members of panels including independent co-optees are encouraged to join and participate, at http://goo.gl/MTLmP

• Safer Future Communities, How the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise Sector can help reduce crime and keep communities safe in your area http://goo.gl/x5LZx and see local network at http://www.oneeastmidlands.org.uk/sfc or at http://goo.gl/N9c0P

    

Contact details

Tim Young

Local Government Information Unit Associate

and

Lead on Policing and Crime,Frontline Consulting Associates

Email: timy@frontlineconsulting.co.ukTel: 020 8904 2815 & 07985 072979Web: www.frontlineconsulting.co.uk

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