Agenda item

Chief Constable's Presentation

Thames Valley Police Chief Constable, Francis Habgood will be attending the meeting with Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner, Matt Barber to deliver a presentation on the work of Thames Valley Police over the last year.

Minutes:

Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner, Matt Barber gave a presentation on the Police and Crime Commissioner’s (PCC) responsibilities and explained that in addition the PCC had a role in setting the local precept. It was expected that there would be a 7% increase on the current low base which was expected to equate to £1 per month for a Band D property. He explained that the Thames Valley policing area had a challenging mix of urban area and diverse sparsely populated rural area.

 

He highlighted the following activities:

       the PCC’s office had created the Victims First Hub which provided a single point of contact for victims, witnesses and family members of victims to access emotional support. Victims First Hub was successful and looking to further improve the referrals for scheme.

       grant funding of £94k was awarded to eight organisations to deliver cyber-crime prevention activities, in particular to young people and the elderly

       the Force has undertaken a range of multi- agency problem solving initiatives to both disrupt and prevent organised crime across the Thames Valley, including exploitation and county lines

       HMICFRS PEEL ‘Effectiveness’ inspection had graded Thames Valley Police as “Good” for the way it deals with crime

       £2.7m funding from government of which £136K is for Bracknell Forest area.

       recorded crime has increased but was still lower than elsewhere and less than ten years ago

       there was a staggered correlation between spending decreasing and crime increasing

       8.8% rise in burglary (6% rise nationally) and work was being done locally to reduce

       the force were working hard to increase use of stop and search powers and the trend was increasing.

 

In particular he looked at the highlights in activity during the first quarter:

       Victims Contract to follow up on crime but it had been difficult to get people to sign up to this but a fantastic scheme as it set their expectations and take up was up to 78% in April

       A new post has been funded to focus on coordinating taxi and licensing premises which prevents people moving around the policing area

       Work was ongoing with partners on rehabilitation work

       a multi-agency database was being developed which would enable better information sharing, risk assessment and data analysis

       101 calls continued to be an issue as they could be responded to slowly but work was ongoing to improve alternative online recording to channel shift residents from call centre but not replace either 101 or 999.

 

Chief Constable, Francis Habgood, gave a presentation on significant policing issues across the borough.  In particular he highlighted that:

  • the force had seen an increased demand on services due to mental health issues.
  • there had been some significant public events which had placed additional demands on the service as they carefully balanced potential threat with engagement with public.
  • they had been struggling with resourcing  as other forces were recruiting Thames Valley’s trained staff.
  • PCSOs were being recruited as police officers which whilst a fantastic outcome did leave the force short of PCSOs.

       It continued to be a challenge to recruit and retain staff in this geographic area due to factors such as cost of living.

       the recent response times for 999 calls were an average 12 seconds and 101 calls had increased from an average 2 minutes to 7 minutes response time.

       his key message was that Bracknell Forest continued to be a safe place to live and work, increase in violence not connected to opening of Lexicon instead related to more stringent recording and reporting. Violence figures now included incidents at care home, playground incidents and prisons.

       an increase in vehicle crime was a result of vans being broken into and therefore work was ongoing to encourage owners to mark their tools as an act of prevention.

       the increase in sexual offenses figures related to increased reporting rather than a volume of victims as it included historical offences.

       there had been a small increase in burglary and the figures included break-ins to garages. This equated to one break-in per day across the whole area.

       decrease in crime had been seen in arson and criminal damage (down by 12%), bike thefts (decreased by 21%) and shoplifting (decreased by 16%). There was a note of caution as not all retailers were reporting shoplifting.

       TVP had been graded as ‘Inadequate’ in relation to crime data integrity but that this was not regarding the integrity or ethics of how crime was recorded but that four key issues were evidenced such as failure to record crime on basis of initial call and use of ‘non-crime’ occurrence types.

       a problem solving group involving the Police, Community Safety Partnership, Health and Education teams had undertaken a partnership approach to tackle community issues on Mount Pleasant estate.

       work was ongoing to tackle County Lines Drugs by setting up joint risk assessment matrix to improve understanding of vulnerabilities and undertaking joint interventions.

       there had been success to reduce demand using schemes such as Stronghold which tackled serious and organised crime.

       the Hidden Crime campaign had tackled a series of hidden crimes that are happening in the heart of communities that often went undetected or unreported and local councillors had a role in highlighting them.

 

In response to a question regarding whether the police took the theft of tools seriously and an online petition to make it a specific offence the Chief Constable clarified that it could not be made a specific offence as it was covered by theft. He reiterated that preventative work was being undertaken with both van owners and local hotels to raise awareness of this issue and promote tool marking. He recognised that it had a serious impact on someone’s livelihood when it occurred.

 

In response to a question regarding drug dealing which was reported at a public meeting as occurring every night for four years the Chief Constable agreed to follow up with Councillor Angell after the meeting regarding progress of prevention activities in that particular area. He explained that the operation at Mount Pleasant was a positive example of joint working to take action against crime but he appreciated it took time and it was not always possible to keep neighbourhoods briefed on detection activity. 

 

In response to a question regarding the use of  Malicious Communications Act the Chief Constable advised that whilst sending improper messages and sexting was an issue the police were clear that they did not want to criminalise young people who had made mistakes. He agreed to provide further information outside of the meeting but stated that in the previous year of 100 reported incidents 64 acts had been prosecuted or resulted in a caution.

 

In response to a question regarding residents frustration with the response time to 101 calls the Chief Constable explained that although it had been particularly bad during July the average response time was two minutes except in extreme cases. This was a priority for the force and they were looking at adjusting staffing but this was a budget challenge so were continuing to promote online options as well. There was a key issue about educating the public as to whether it was a policing issue at all and building community resilience. However he concluded that satisfaction figures with the 101 service remained high at 90%.

 

In response to a question about whether resources would be available to enforce a proposed reduction in speed limit on the A3095 leading up to the new Broadmoor hospital development the Chief Constable explained the actions which would be taken initially. He considered that the road should be designed / engineered so that enforcement was not required, if concern was raised than work would be undertaken to check whether speeding was perception rather than reality so volunteers would be deployed to undertake speed checks and then if required this would be escalated to use a speed van or speed enforcement team to prevent an accident hotspot.

 

The Chief Constable was asked a question regarding how Thames Valley Police’s demand issues relating to mental health compared with other areas such as Aldershot with its Crisis Café. In response he stated that 40% of calls related to mental health and that these figures could be circulated. The mental health triage team had a significant impact  on effectively dealing with situations and mental health practitioners were available at the call centre. There had been a positive reduction in the use of mental health powers.

 

When asked why there was not a special unit to respond to the demand in policing when there were special occasions in Windsor the Chief Constable confirmed that such a team was being considered. For significant events such as the Royal Wedding  all teams would be required to pull together but it agreed that it may be possible to reduce the impact of regular events such as the guard change.

 

In response to a query regarding an incident on the M4 when a 101 call was not answered within 12 minutes the Chief Constable reiterated that 101 calls should only be for non-emergency  but the incident described should have been called through to 999 instead.

 

When challenged as to whether neighbourhood policing was still a priority for Thames Valley Police the Chief Constable explained that it was at the centre of ongoing work to support communities to be more resilient and an operational change made in the previous year had protected the neighbourhood teams. At the first level he considered that there should still be a presence locally and secondly that the teams would have a role in local problem solving. There were 400 PCSOs across Thames Valley and the figure only dropped when funding was reduced.

 

The Chief Constable was asked to respond to recent reports that the College of Police did not think it was worthwhile investigating crimes below a certain value. He replied that Thames Valley Police did not set a value threshold for investigating instead concentrated on the potential to solve a crime. He confirmed that some crimes were closed quickly if there were no lines of enquiry to investigate but they would support victims to understand this action. 

 

The Mayor thanked the Chief Constable and the Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner for their attendance and informative presentations.

Supporting documents:

 

Contact Information

Democratic services

Email: committee@bracknell-forest.gov.uk