Minutes:
The Panel considered the following matter, the Chairman having decided that it was of an urgent nature as a result of the need to enable the Commissioner to publicly respond to recently published HMIC reports concerning Honour-based Crime, Domestic Violence and Vulnerable People which had resulted in some media interest.
The Commissioner’s statement was as follows:
“With regard to
vulnerability, I have said this in the public arena:
Looking after the most vulnerable people in our communities lies at the
very heart of any police force and this has been a priority for me during my
time as PCC.
My commitment to this has been demonstrated most recently by the
provision of £1.2m to help tackle CSE and prevent vulnerable people from
falling prey to abuse. I am confident that this funding will serve to further
strengthen the work the force delivers in this area, in partnership with
others…
If I can break away
from what I wrote there just to say a public thank you. There has been an awful
lot of really good work done in the partnership arena to deal with this issue
and my Chief Executive has been leading on that but with plenty of other people
who are represented or indeed who are actually here round this table so thanks
to all of you. I think we are doing
some very good work together in that regard. Back to what I
said…
I too am disappointed that the myriad of work undertaken by the Force
has not been fully recognised and I share the concerns of the Deputy Chief
Constable that the report may not completely capture the breadth and depth of
the very significant work delivered by officers, particularly those in the
Signal Team, Multi-Agency CSE Team and the Missing Persons Team.
I will read the content of the report and assess its observations
extremely carefully in order to understand what more the Force could be doing,
in partnership with others, to address the issues raised.
Mr Chair and Members
of this Panel you can be very sure that the Chief Constable and I will be doing
precisely that and I did find those areas where they have spelled out, at least
adequately, what it is we need to be doing to get the grade higher than
currently it is.
With regard to the
other two reports which you know have only come out in
the last 36 hours or so, I and the Chief Constable have not had a chance to
even start to digest those yet. It’s been a fairly frenetic 36 hours as you
know, but the same will apply. In my role as Police and Crime Commissioner
where I hold the Chief to account, I want to see what’s in there and let the
Chief advise me on those areas where work should and could be done, within
resource, or may be where necessary he will advise me where resource needs to
be swung in order to allow the work to be done in order to bring us up to the
grades that we all like to see.
I’d like to say one
other thing in this public forum and it’s this: I was with the Chief yesterday
with HMIC representatives and I made a point to them and I feel this now quite
strongly. I am in no way an apologist for Police performance and I hope the
Chief would admit that I have held him to account suitably in the last 3 years.
He knows I have. But also there is another thing about HMIC here and the way
that they report on things. Even the two words that are used – “requires
improvement”, carry a cache of ‘this isn’t good enough’ and I feel at times the
overall grading that’s applied to them fails to recognise in anything like
complete enough fairness the many good things that do happen and on behalf of
the force, who yes I hold them to account but I also represent them as it were,
I do feel that HMIC does a bit too much kicking and not quite enough praising
and I have let that message be known through the meeting I had with HMIC and
the Chief yesterday and I will do so with Zoe Billingham and indeed Tom Winsor
as and when I have a moment. Thank you.”
RESOLVED:
That a report on the action taken in response to the HMIC reports on Honour Based Crime and Domestic Abuse and Vulnerability be considered at the Panel’s meeting on 22 March 2016.