Source · Select Committees · Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 9
9
Accepted
Paragraph: 64
PCCs have enhanced opportunities to improve police complaints through new models and scrutiny
Conclusion
We note enhanced opportunities for PCCs to play a greater role in the local complaints process following reforms introduced in 2020. The three models present a unique opportunity for PCCs, as part of their complaint-handling responsibilities, to support proactively and systemically more effective complaints systems within their forces, although nothing in what they do should delay complaint-handling processes any further. Statutory guidance sets out that PCCs and their equivalents hold their chief constable accountable for the performance of the local complaints and disciplinary processes by scrutinising local complaints data for example to identify themes and recurring issues—and how quickly forces resolve those issues— in complaints.
Government response summary AI-generated
The government acknowledged the need for further work on timeliness and confirmed the Home Office is due to publish experimental police misconduct statistics in May, which will include initial analysis of end-to-end investigation timeliness. It also reiterated the College of Policing's Code of Ethics review and the Angiolini Inquiry.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Paragraph Reference:
64
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government · verbatim extract
Accepted
The Government has demonstrated its commitment to supporting the police and policing bodies, including PCCs, and providing them with the resources they need to fight crime and keep the public safe. That is why for 2022/23, the Government has published a total police funding settlement of up to £16.9 billion; an increase of up to £1.1 billion when compared to 2021/22. Assuming full take up of precept flexibility, overall police funding available to PCCs will increase by up to £796 million (5.8% in cash terms) next year. This includes an additional £550 million, including funding to deliver the final 8,000 additional officers and up to an additional £246 million from the proposed council tax precept flexibility. PCCs and Mayors with PCC functions have a vital role in ensuring public confidence in local policing in their areas. Ensuring a robust complaints system is clearly key to ensuring public confidence. Whilst the funding settlement is decided centrally, it is for these directly elected local policing bodies in conjunction with their Chief Constables to make the operational decisions on how to allocate their resources based on local knowledge, local priorities and experience. We do not intend to prescribe how specific funding allocations should be spent or how local decisions should be taken. Anecdotal evidence suggests that, in deciding which model to originally adopt, factors such as supportive communications, election timings and resources will have influenced PCCs’ thinking. The APCC have facilitated events with PCCs since the May 2021 PCC elections to explore whether there are further areas where PCCs might wish to expand on their complaint functions. The APCC further notes that these events have included input from the IOPC and the College of Policing to review the recurring and developing themes which are arising, and both the College of Policing and IOPC have committed to looking in detail at the systemic issues. The fact that several PCCs have already adopted models 2 and 3 since the reforms were implemented in February 2020 would indicate that PCC’s do have the capacity within their existing budgets to exercise these choices. Police forces and the discipline system
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