Source · HMICFRS

PEEL Assessment 2023-25: Thames Valley Police

6 December 2023 PEEL Force Inspection 7 recommendations 2 causes for concern 13 areas for improvement

PEEL 2023-25 inspection findings for Thames Valley Police

Applicable forces

Causes for concern

Concern Open Thames Valley Police needs to improve its performance in the multi-agency safeguarding hubs to better protect vulnerable people Every multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH) includes a range of partners whose function is to work together to assess and manage the risk to individuals who have been identified as a vulnerable adult or child. Many are victims of domestic abuse. This is achieved through the prompt assessment of safeguarding referrals by the force and sharing information about those at risk of harm with the other safeguarding agencies. In some cases, agencies need to discuss the details of individual cases to agree the best strategy to protect the person from harm. In cases involving children these should be held as soon as possible. This is generally within 24 hours, depending on the child’s level of need and risk, but they must be held within three working days (Children’s Act 1 8 ). espite the force’s objective to always hold these as soon as possible within 24 hours, but no longer than 72 hours, we found that strategy discussions concerning children were delayed beyond this. We found in one MASH that 28 strategy discussions were delayed beyond 72 hours, seven of which were at least two weeks old. We found that some of the MA Hs’ staffing levels weren’t sufficient to deal with demand. This means that the force isn’t fully aware of the risks contained in queues of referrals, as they aren’t being checked for risk in a timely manner. Referrals that need to be shared with partners aren’t always being shared in a timely way. This means that the support vulnerable people need is delayed. In one case, a vulnerable adult hadn’t been assessed for six weeks. The large backlogs we found means that staff in the MASH are spending less time on reviewing the information recorded in police systems about people mentioned in the referral. This means that they base some decisions about whether to share the referral with partners solely on the information in the referral, without reviewing all the information that might be on police systems. This is a significant risk, as the full picture of what is known isn’t being considered before determining the level of risk or the appropriate level of support. Staff reported feeling overwhelmed with the pressure of having to manage the burden of risk daily. They were unaware of any plan to improve this situation. This added to the levels of stress and anxiety, with the associated risk of ill health or loss of valuable staff. We immediately raised our concerns about the safeguarding structure and processes with the force. It accepted that there was a need for urgent action. The force has immediately taken steps to increase staffing levels within the MASHs to cope with demand. We are encouraged by the steps the force has taken to address these concerns and the positive impact these are having. The force plans to carry out an in-depth review of how this unit functions and can be improved. The force told us that at the time of our fieldwork staff vacancies in the MASH were at their highest levels since the MASH was implemented. This was due to a new exploitation team and shift pattern being introduced, which prompted numerous staff movements. The effect on those remaining was made worse by the seasonal increase in demand for leave in the pre-school holiday period. The force should make sure that it reviews and understands all factors that contributed to the situation. We will continue to monitor the effect of the steps the force has taken to make sure that backlogs and risks don’t develop in the future. Thames Valley Police

Concern Open Thames Valley Police needs to make sure that all personnel have appropriate training and/or knowledge of their role requirements when attending child and adult strategy discussions In our May 2023 national child protection inspection of Thames Valley Police, we found that not all personnel attending multi-agency strategy discussions were fully trained for their role. During our national child protection inspection, we also found police officers attending strategy discussion meetings who had no training for this role. Thames Valley Police

Recommendations

R7.1 Open Make sure it has sufficient trained personnel within the multi-agency safeguarding hub structures to manage current demand. Thames Valley Police

R7.2 Open Reduce the number of outstanding assessments of new cases. Thames Valley Police

R7.3 Open Prioritise assessments according to the assessed level of risk and make timely referrals to partner organisations. 36 Within six months, Thames Valley Police should:. Thames Valley Police

R7.4 Open Have sustainable safeguarding systems and processes, with sufficient trained personnel in the multi-agency safeguarding hubs to meet current and future demand to protect vulnerable people. Thames Valley Police

R8.1 Open Take steps to make sure that it has provided appropriate training to all officers attending child and adult strategy discussions with partner organisations. Within six months, Thames Valley Police should:. Thames Valley Police

R8.2 Open Have reviewed its training arrangements to make sure that all officers attending strategy discussions have a sound knowledge of their role at these meetings. Thames Valley Police

R8.3 Open Make sure suitably trained personnel undertake strategy discussions with partner organisations. 37. Thames Valley Police

Areas for improvement

AFI The force needs to improve the recording of the grounds for stop and search activity by its officers. It should make sure that people detained for the purpose of a search are told what the object of the search is, and where they can obtain a copy of the search record From our review of a sample of 143 stop and search records from the year ending December 2022, we estimate that 78.3 percent (with a confidence interval of +/- 6.7 percent) of all stop and searches by the force during this period had reasonable grounds recorded. This is compared with the findings from our previous review of records from 2020, where we found 88.3 percent (with a confidence interval of +/- 4.2 percent) of stop and searches had reasonable grounds recorded. Of the stop and search records we reviewed for people from ethnic minority backgrounds, 86.2 percent (56 of 65) had reasonable grounds recorded. We also reviewed a sample of the body-worn video (BWV) footage of stop and searches. While officers were polite and respectful in almost all of the cases we looked at, details about what was being searched for and how to obtain a search record were only given in 38.5 percent (5 of 13) of them. This may mean that members of the public remain unclear about what is being searched for and how to obtain a record, and this could undermine their confidence that police are carrying out stop and searches fairly. Thames Valley Police

AFI The force needs to make sure it has sufficiently trained officers and staff and resources to make sure the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme function complies with the required legislative processes and timescales The force doesn’t make full use of the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme’s (DVDS, also known as Clare’s Law) right to know and right to ask. This allows the police to disclose information to a victim or potential victim of domestic abuse about their partner’s previous abusive or violent offending. In the year ending 30 September 2022, Thames Valley Police recorded 154 right to know applications and 29 such disclosures, which equated to six applications and 1.2 disclosures per 100,000 population. These values were lower than expected compared to other forces in England and Wales. In the same year, the force recorded 721 right to ask applications and 109 disclosures, which equated to 29 applications and 4.3 disclosures per 100,000 population. This right to ask disclosure rate was lower than expected compared to other forces in England and Wales. In addition, the force can’t easily monitor the numbers or timeliness of the V disclosures made. This means that it can’t identify how well it is using this tool. The force told us that the disclosure process was often completed outside recommended timescales. Thames Valley Police

AFI The force should improve its oversight and understanding of risk in relation to wanted people The force intelligence and specialist operation unit has created a database of all wanted persons. It has categorised them into red, amber and green according to the level of identified risk. This includes those wanted on warrants, foreign offenders and outstanding suspects. At the time of the inspection there were more than 3,400 people on this list. We looked at 11 cases with ten separate outstanding suspects. In three of these we found that the suspect had been dealt with, but the record hadn’t been updated. This means that an individual may be incorrectly identified as an outstanding suspect by other officers. It also means that the data held by the force about the numbers and potential risk posed by outstanding offenders is flawed. In other cases where the suspect was still outstanding, some investigations involving serious offences had taken too long. This contrasted with findings from our victim service assessment and our fieldwork, where we saw timely efforts to track down outstanding offenders. This indicates that while immediate efforts to apprehend outstanding offenders are generally satisfactory, they aren’t as good when an investigation takes longer. This may be linked to problems with record keeping on the IT system the force uses to record actions about investigations, known as Niche. The problems with record keeping make it difficult to understand when suspects have been dealt with. The force has recently made corrections to its crime recording system that have reduced the number of suspects shown as outstanding. There is further work happening to identify why some of the data on the system is incorrect. Unless this data is accurate, the force will not fully understand how to prioritise its activities to apprehend offenders. It could also make more use of information on wanted persons to oversee and drive activity at a strategic level. The data produced by the intelligence and specialist operation unit about overall numbers and the risk classification is provided to local commanders. ut the same data and any direction of travel isn’t used at any strategic performance oversight group. And, as our inspection revealed, its use as a performance management tool is undermined by inaccuracies in Niche, because suspects who are no longer outstanding are still recorded as wanted. The force should take steps to make sure that it can rely on the accuracy of the data on its Niche system and that it has strategic oversight of the overall risk posed by outstanding offenders. Thames Valley Police

AFI The force should develop a more detailed performance framework in respect of its management of registered sex offenders The framework should help it to understand: • the number of solo visits to registered sex offenders and any associated risk that may be incurred as a result; and • the context of its backlogs of active risk management system assessments, risk management plans and supervisory reviews. We found that both warranted officers and non-warranted staff carry out visits to registered sex offenders on their own. These solo visits are contrary to authorised professional practice because of the risk that the attending staff could be vulnerable to grooming by the registered sex offender, the risk that the quality of visit will be reduced and the risk to officer safety. Senior leaders told us that solo visits only occurred after being subject to risk assessment and with supervisory oversight. However, staff told us that this was a frequent practice in place to manage workloads. We found that supervisory decision-making and risk assessments about solo visits weren’t recorded on the Violent and ex Offender Register. They also weren’t detailed in any performance management data. The force regularly produces performance data on the capacity and activities of the management of sexual and violent offenders unit. This provided detail for use by junior managers and separate information for senior leaders. We found that the information presented to senior leaders was insufficient to allow them to understand how far behind some activity was and the associated level of risk. During our review of Violent and Sex Offender Register records, we found delays in completing active risk management system assessments for some registered sex offenders. In other cases, there were inappropriate delays in completing visits to others. It is important that senior leaders have clear oversight of performance indicators that allow them to easily understand developing risk and backlogs, and, importantly, the extent to which solo visits are being used. Thames Valley Police

AFI The force should make sure that safeguarding information is shared with local authorities before taking enforcement action, to effectively safeguard children from serious harm In our 2023 national child protection inspection and this PEEL inspection, we found that there are sometimes delays in consulting with social services to instigate safeguarding of children. Staff told us that is because of a concern that early action taken by children’s social services may alert suspects, leading to the loss of evidence. Offenders may then remain at liberty and pose a future risk. Thames Valley Police has told us that it has now introduced a pilot in some areas, where it notifies children’s social services as soon as a suspect and an associated address are identified. It makes further disclosures to children’s social services as the investigation and risk assessment develop. The force says that once these pilots have been completed and evaluated it will introduce this across the force area. However, this isn’t yet in place across the entire force area. The force should always make sure it completes a referral to children’s social services at the earliest possible opportunity when it believes a suspect has access to children. This will allow information-sharing to begin between the two services and would help them build an accurate picture of any risk the suspect poses. Thames Valley Police

AFI The force needs to better understand why officers, and in particular new recruits, wish to leave the force, in order to improve the support it provides Greater numbers of police officers are leaving Thames Valley Police than expected. In the year ending 31 March 2023, 251 constables left the force. In addition, the force told us that a further 53 student officers left between April and mid-July 2023. Thames Valley Police has one of the highest levels of police officers who resign or transfer to other forces among all forces in England and Wales. This turnover is placing significant strain on the force. This is because of the loss of experienced officers, but also because of the impact on other areas, such as training and vetting. This leads to delays in replacing staff elsewhere in the organisation. It is estimated that the full cost to forces of each officer who resigns after one year’s service is around £80,000. This means that the force is also having to absorb a large financial impact in replacing officers they have invested in. The resignation of student officers is a particular problem for the force. We found many student officers had multiple tutors, some of whom were themselves inexperienced. Once the tutoring relationship had ended, some student officers felt abandoned. They told us that they didn’t feel ready for the role without any ongoing support. In our PEEL workforce survey, open between 14 February and 24 March 2023, we found that in Thames Valley Police, 72.1 percent of new recruits (303 of 420 respondents) didn’t have either a buddy or a mentor. In Thames Valley Police, 70 percent of student officer resignations occur in their first 12 months of service. We also found that the integration of new recruits into their teams was inconsistent, and guidance on locally welcoming and supporting new recruits wasn’t always followed. The force is aware of this issue and classes resignations as either avoidable or unavoidable. For instance, an officer reaching the end of their career would be expected to retire and would be viewed as an unavoidable loss. However, many resignations are viewed as avoidable. Regarding new recruits, the force believes that many officers resign because they start with unrealistic expectations of the role of a police officer. In other cases, the force feels that the additional burden of study for the academic routes into policing has been too much. To address this, many new recruits now starting in the force are on the independent police learning and development programme pathway, which doesn’t require academic learning. It is also introducing a local interview as part of the recruitment process, to make sure applicants fully understood the role and have the necessary attributes. It is also planning to put in place a small retention team. The team will work with individuals to establish and resolve issues that might be precursors to a resignation. However, the force’s understanding of resignations and what could have been put in place to retain officers is hampered by inconsistent completion of exit interviews, and the lack of a systematic review of all types of leavers. The force needs to improve how it gains data about resignations, which will help it better understand when and why people leave. The steps that the force is taking are welcome but need to be enhanced by improving the data available. Better data will allow it to identify why so many officers consider leaving the force and put targeted interventions in place to address those issues. Thames Valley Police

AFI The force needs to assure itself that it has effective governance processes that are capable of overseeing strategic risks to make sure they are well managed We found gaps in the force’s governance of its risk register, leading to a lack of appropriate progress. The force has a detailed strategic plan for 2022/23, which considers the police and crime commissioner’s Police and Criminal Justice Plan 2021–25. The force has invested in systems and processes to give a better understanding of data and insight. The data is clearly aligned with the force’s priorities. An established governance structure allows the force to measure performance progress against the plans. However, we found several concerning issues that had already been identified as risks to the force and recorded on the force risk register. These are covered in more detail in other areas of this report, but include staffing in the multi-agency safeguarding hubs, high levels of staff turnover and unmanageable workloads. Despite being on the force risk register for a considerable length of time, they hadn’t been effectively resolved. We found similar issues in these areas during our last inspection. The force needs to assure itself that its governance functions, especially those designed to identify and address force risk and operating issues, are more effective. This will help the force to anticipate and address more serious issues in a timely way and make sure its operating model and workforce help it to respond to priorities and current and future demand. Thames Valley Police

AFI The force should make sure that it understands why it has the lowest reported levels of antisocial behaviour in England and Wales In our 2021 PEEL inspection report, we commented on the fact that Thames Valley Police recorded the lowest numbers of antisocial behaviour incidents of any force in England and Wales, at 11.9 incidents per 1,000 population in the year ending 31 March 2021. We noted that the Crime Survey for England and Wales showed the number of people who experience or witness antisocial behaviour in the Thames Valley Police area was at a similar level to many forces that record higher levels of incidents than Thames Valley do. We suggested that the force should identify the reasons for this anomaly. During this inspection, we found that levels of reported antisocial behaviour have decreased further. In the year ending 31 March 2022, Thames Valley Police recorded only 8.9 incidents per 1,000 population. It still has the lowest levels of recorded antisocial behaviour of any police force in England and Wales. The force has not taken steps to identify and understand the reasons for this. It is important that the force learns the reasons for this disparity. This will allow it to understand and address antisocial behaviour in the force area or share good practice. Thames Valley Police

AFI The force needs to reduce the number of non-emergency 101 calls that are abandoned The service given to the public who contact Thames Valley Police by telephone requires improvement. The force told us that, in the year ending 31 March 2023, the average time to answer a call through the 101 system was six minutes and four seconds. This compares with the average time of three minutes and four seconds the previous year. The force told us that 28 percent of callers to the Thames Valley 101 service hang up before their call is answered. The force believes that many of these are diverted to the online reporting provision, as many terminations occur when an automated message provides this option. However, there are others who terminate further into the call wait time that the force isn’t able to track. The contact management department has a high turnover of staff and difficulties replacing those who leave. The force told us that since April 2022, 120 staff have left the department, with only 70 replacements. This leaves the department understaffed, with ill-health absences rising from an average of 17 days per staff member last year to 20 days per staff member this year. The force wants to provide a better service to callers and is planning to use new technology to improve the situation. It has estimated that 40 percent of the calls it receives are in connection with something that the caller has already contacted them about. There will be greater options for callers to ‘self-serve’, such as victims of crime being provided with a code to log in to a citizen portal. This will allow communication with the investigating officer as well as automated messages, such as victim updates, reducing the demand on the contact management department. The force has completed modelling which suggests that self-service will allow it to improve call handling times and reduce the number of 101 calls that are abandoned. The force, along with Hampshire Constabulary, has invested £1.2m in this new service, but its implementation, due in July 2023, has been delayed. The force should closely monitor any further delay to make sure that anticipated improvements are achieved. Thames Valley Police

AFI The force needs to attend calls for service in line with its published attendance times and make sure the caller is updated if there are delays The force has recently carried out a review of its response to incidents, including those classed as urgent, reported between September 2021 and February 2023. It found that it only attended 22 percent of these calls within 60 minutes, with large numbers waiting far longer. Of these calls,18 percent weren’t attended for over eight hours. This is not a satisfactory speed of response to urgent calls. It needs to understand and address the issues behind this to make sure that its officers attend incidents quickly enough to gather evidence and safeguard members of the public. The review also found that officers were uncertain about how quickly they were expected to attend incidents graded as urgent. We reviewed a sample of urgent calls awaiting attendance. While in many cases some efforts to attend had been made, in others no units had been available for an extended period. We found domestic abuse cases a week old that had been graded as urgent that hadn’t been dealt with. There had been no reassessment of the risk or escalation of these incidents to more senior officers. This means that any change in the risk or vulnerability of the person that might be caused by these delays wasn’t identified. As part of our victim service assessment, we also found that, where a delay in response occurred, the victim was only updated in seven of the 12 cases we reviewed. The force should make sure that it notifies the caller if there is a delay and reassesses risk and vulnerability. Thames Valley Police

AFI The force should carry out proportionate, thorough, and timely investigations into all reported crimes, keeping victims updated in accordance with the Victims’ Code In our 2021 PEEL inspection, we found in the sample of crimes we reviewed that investigations weren’t always effective and timely, relevant lines of enquiry weren’t always completed and victims weren’t always kept updated. As part of its overall approach to improvement in this area, described in more detail in the main findings section below, the force has created assessment and investigation units (AIU), which went live across the whole force in April 2023. The force intends the AIUs to free up the time of incident and response officers to provide a better service to the public, while also improving the quality of investigations. The unit first assesses the suitability of the crime to make sure there is no need for police to attend, assesses the risk to the victim and puts initial investigative actions in place. The force aims to complete this initial stage within 24 hours of the report. Following this assessment, where appropriate, crimes requiring further investigation are allocated to an investigator within an AIU and dealt with in priority order. There are three AIUs that between them cover the force area. We recognise the ambition of the force to improve its service to members of the public and victims of crime through the creation of this unit. However, during our inspection in July 2023, we found that some of the AIUs didn’t yet have enough officers and staff to complete these tasks in a timely manner. This led to delays in both the initial assessment process and investigations being started. We found that 1,659 crimes were awaiting allocation to an investigator, with 937 waiting two weeks, 379 waiting four weeks and 116 waiting six weeks since the date of the offence. There were also too many crimes awaiting an initial assessment. In one AIU there were some waiting for up to nine days for this to take place. In addition, there were too many victims of crime who had received no contact from the force about the progress of the investigation for more than 28 days. We found evidence of shoplifting offences not receiving a full investigation – despite there being lines of enquiry such as CCTV evidence and named suspects – because victims of crime hadn’t returned pro forma statements or CCTV to the force. This meant that opportunities were being missed to bring offenders to justice and prevent further offending. We immediately shared our findings with the force. It has provided details of its plans to improve processes in the AIUs to become more efficient, and how staffing, including early actions to reduce the backlogs, will be increased. We are encouraged by the force’s plans and the steps it has taken since our inspection. The force should make sure that the resources needed to help the AIU achieve what is intended are put in place and maintained to make sure that crimes are investigated effectively and victims updated in a timely manner. Thames Valley Police

AFI The force doesn’t consistently achieve appropriate outcomes for victims The force isn’t always achieving acceptable outcomes for victims of crime. It has low numbers of crimes that are solved following investigations. The force needs to understand the issue and work to achieve better outcomes for victims. Thames Valley Police

AFI The force should make sure that there are processes in place to monitor protective orders and make sure that breaches are prioritised to safeguard the victim The force should make sure that there are consistent processes in place to monitor protective orders and make sure that breaches are prioritised to safeguard the victim. In our 2021 PEEL inspection, we said that the force should actively consider the use of measures to protect people from domestic abuse cases. Since then, it has implemented better processes to achieve higher levels of applications for Domestic Violence Protection Notices and is now in line with many other forces in England and Wales. It converts more than 90 percent of these into Domestic Violence Protection Orders, which provide greater protection for victims. We found some evidence of a structured approach to enforcing Domestic Violence Protection Orders, but, overall, we didn’t find a consistent force-wide approach to this. This means that in some areas identifying that a breach has occurred may be reliant on the victim getting in touch with police. This isn’t the best approach, as a victim who is traumatised or afraid may not do so. Thames Valley Police