Best Value audit and inspection: Northern Constabulary and Northern joint police board – podcast transcript

Fiona: My name is Fiona Deans and I’m joined by the Deputy Chair of the Accounts Commission, Douglas Sinclair and Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary Bill Skelly to discuss the Best Value audit and inspection of Northern Constabulary and Northern joint police board.  

Douglas, if we can just start off by being clear about the distinction between a police force and a police joint board because some people may not be aware of joint boards and their work.  A police force deals with the day to day operational aspects of policing but what exactly is a board, what are its responsibilities and how important is it?

Douglas: Maybe a good starting point is to say that every council is a police authority but apart from Fife and Dumfries and Galloway what’s happened in Scotland is that a number of councils have come together to form a police board and that’s the case in Northern.  There are 24 members with councillors from each of the local authorities; 16 from Highland Council; four from Western Isles; two from Orkney and two from Shetland Islands Council.  The joint board is very important.  It is actually a separate legal entity; it has a number of key responsibilities, setting the budget, contributing to the priorities of the force, ensuring that the force delivers best value and, perhaps most important of all, holding the chief constable and the force to account for their performance.

Fiona: Bill, if we can start off by talking about the force – what is it good at?

Bill: Overall, Northern Constabulary is performing well and is demonstrating many of the elements of best value.  The Constabulary has a good working relationship with the board and they work well together in areas like community planning.  The force executive, which comprises of the Chief Constable, his deputy, two Chief Superintendants and two senior police staff members plays a key role in challenging performance and driving improvement.  The force is able to report low crime and high detection rates in comparison to the Scottish average.  A recent review led to a significant restructuring of the force with a shift in resources towards front line policing delivery. 

Fiona: Can you say a bit more about the force review? 

Bill: The review restructured the delivery of police services and brought with it significant efficiency savings.  The force reduced the number of police support staff posts by 75, that’s about 15 percent.  The review also reduced the number of staff in force headquarters and put those resources towards frontline policing by increasing the number of police officers.
 
Fiona: Are there any areas where the force can improve?

Bill: While overall Northern Constabulary is performing well, there are certain areas in which we’d like to see some improvement. In particular, the way the force monitors its performance and how it shares that information both with the board and with other forces in Scotland. 

They also need to get better at meeting national targets for call handling.  Despite a positive trend over the past three years it is the only force in Scotland not to achieve the national target.  The Constabulary also needs to speed up the submission of reports to the Procurator Fiscal and Children’s Reporter where they currently shows the second worst performance nationally.

Fiona: Douglas, what is the board doing well?

Douglas: I think first of all it’s important to say that the board members understand what their role is, which in a sense is at the beginning and at the end of the process.  The beginning in terms of setting priorities, of setting a budget and the end in terms of scrutinising and challenging the chief constable and the force, holding them to account.  The bit in the middle is the operational matters which are clearly an area for the chief constable.  The other thing we found in our report, and you don’t find this in every report we do, is a pretty significant extent of self awareness because they had the courage to undertake a self-assessment themselves before we undertook the audit and I believe that’s a very positive sign of a board that has a capacity and an interest in learning. 

Fiona: Where can it improve?

Douglas: What the Commission said is that the board fulfils the challenge role well but it could do that even more.  In particular the Commission felt that it was important that the board itself define the performance information it wanted in order to be accountable to its communities rather than be given information by the force.  It’s a balance but I think it is important that proactively the board sets out to the chief constable the kinds of information on performance that it thinks is important.   

Fiona: The Commission’s findings say there is evidence of inconsistencies in the relationships between the board and its constituent councils.  Can you say more about this?

Douglas: What we found there was that in one council the board’s minutes got to the full council for consideration, in another they’re placed in the members’ lounge and another is given briefings on an exceptions only basis.  I think the problem there, that we’ve highlighted, is the lack of national guidance in terms of the relationship between the board and the constituent councils.  It is important that the constituent councils understand their role.  As I said earlier the board is a legally constituted authority and requisitions funds from the constituent councils but that doesn’t mean to say that councils themselves don’t have a role in questioning the proposed budget and exercising their democratic mandate as well.  What we’re saying is that the national guidance should be updated and takes account of that.

Fiona: So Bill, what happens next?

Bill: There is an improvement agenda in the report which suggests areas the board, the force and the constituent councils should consider working on.  Myself, the Accounts Commission and Audit Scotland will be looking for the board and the force to produce improvement plans to address the points set out in the agenda.