Scottish Government
Printable version E-mail this to a friend

Productivity of police officers

A report published today recommends a number of actions to improve the monitoring of the productivity of police officers and to encourage forces to make greater connections between performance and service delivery at the strategic level and frontline policing.

The Productivity of Police Officers report was published by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary for Scotland (HMICS). It builds on their 2005 report, Managing Improvement, which showed a healthy and growing performance culture within Scottish forces.

Today's report recommends:

    * The Scottish Policing Performance Framework should be incorporated into public performance reports and used as a basis for reporting to police authorities/boards
    * Forces encourage use of accurate and timely performance information with a focus at team and individual level
    * Development of clear tasking processes under the National Intelligence Model
    * Training provided to Inspectors and Sergeants is reviewed and developed
    * The new national objective driven personal development review system is adopted, in its entirety, by all forces
    * That a common methodology for activity analysis, focusing on management and performance information is agreed
    * Preparatory work for the new Common Performance Management Platform is implemented without delay

The Assistant Inspector of Constabulary for Scotland, Malcolm R Dickson said:

"It is vital that the police in Scotland delivers an appropriate and effective service to local communities. Our previous thematic inspection in 2005, Managing Improvement, demonstrated that forces had embraced a performance culture that was developing and growing stronger.

"During this inspection, HMICS has seen that this culture has grown even stronger and that the Association of Chief Police Officers for Scotland (ACPOS) has taken an important strategic lead with the development of a dedicated business area focused on performance management.

"One of the major achievements in Scottish policing in recent years, through the collaboration of ACPOS with the Scottish Government and other stakeholders, has been the creation of a common Scottish Policing Performance Framework (SPPF).

"This is an agreed set of indicators which forces, police services, police authorities and police boards, as well as HMICS, Audit Scotland, the Scottish Government and Parliament can use to measure and understand performance and the factors which affect performance, all with the intention that policing will continue to improve for the benefit of the public. We found that this was not as widely used to communicate performance to police authorities and boards as we had anticipated.

"HMICS believes that, as the Framework matures and provides learning, the local politicians who provide local accountability on these authorities and boards are the very people who could make good use of this valuable information.

"We do not say that all eight police authorities and boards should receive identical reports - there will always be local need for some different, additional information - but we do recommend that the SPPF should be the common core of performance information.

"Within forces we observed that, at senior levels, there was a very good understanding of performance management and the National Intelligence Model with many examples of how they were used to improve and target policing activity at strategic level.

" However, it was found that, in many areas, the officers on the ground were almost exclusively focused on reacting to the next problem and did not have a clear appreciation of how performance could be understood and improved. This is not necessarily a fault of the officers themselves and it is something which can be addressed by internal management and training."

The inspection also found that the current staff appraisal systems in many forces were not operated effectively with far too many members of staff either not receiving an appraisal or receiving it late.

Appraisals are an important part of managing performance and ensuring that individual officers have been set clear objectives which reflect the priorities of their force and the communities for whom they work. Fortunately, a new national personal development review system, currently being introduced, will provide forces with a significant opportunity to improve this situation.

The recommendations in this report highlight some important areas which will provide chief constables with an opportunity to improve how performance management and tasking is conducted at operational level, as well as how priorities and objectives are communicated and used.

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary for Scotland (commonly known as the Police Inspectorate or HMICS) is responsible for inspecting the eight Scottish police forces and five police services. HMICS operates independently of the police forces, police authorities and the Scottish Government and exists to monitor and improve the police services in Scotland.

Related Information

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

Facing the Future...find out more