Comparing performance

The Home Secretary, Theresa May MP, has been clear that her overarching priority for the police is to cut crime. In practice, this involves: the prevention and detection of crime; understanding offender behaviour; dealing with the activities that can lead to criminality; building relationships with the public; understanding the experience of victims; maintaining public order; policing public spaces; keeping communities safe; and many other issues. In addition, as an emergency service the police have a number of other responsibilities and commitments, including preparing for and responding to major incidents and even natural disasters.

The role of the police is to respond to calls for assistance from the public and other agencies, and to initiate other activity to ensure the safety of the community. Ultimately, everything the police do is in order to cut crime.

In common with the rest of the public sector, police forces are finding new and less expensive ways of working that meet the needs of the public and sustain quality of service. Of particular note is the new initiative of restorative justice (or community resolution) through which the police can reduce re-offending, reduce cost and better meet the needs of victims in dealing with crimes where the offender is known. Forces now use new ways of dealing with some crimes, meaning that some ‘official’ statistics (such as detection rates) under-represent the success in solving crimes. Forces are also placing emphasis on understanding criminals, particularly those who represent a serious threat and operate in organised groups. Offenders don’t recognise force boundaries and so police forces work together to prevent serious crimes including terrorism. These crimes are relatively rare but take a great deal of effort and resource.

1. Introduction

Surrey is one of the safest counties in England, where public confidence in the Police is very high and crime levels are relatively low. It is home to over 1.1 million residents and many major businesses. However, its proximity to London and two international airports, key road networks and mix of urban and rural locations brings additional challenges. For example, the threat from travelling criminals remains high with 60% based outside Surrey and over half of these from the London area.

The Force faces a number of changes including the introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners and new policing challenges such as the Olympics. Maintaining our clear focus will be especially important whilst the national picture remains unstable, for example, with the restructuring of the NPIA and the creation of a National Crime Agency. Additionally, the squeeze on public sector finances means that the Force needs to focus on reducing costs. Officers and staff will all be destabilised by the uncertain outcomes from the Winsor and Hutton reports.

2. Surrey Public First

The Surrey Public First Strategy was developed to provide a more common sense style of policing. Our focus is on serving local people and delivering their priorities for policing. It is about the prevention of crime above the pursuit of external targets which can skew the use of our limited resources. Put simply, it is about putting the people of Surrey at the heart of everything we do.

Growing operational pressures and uncertainty requires us to remain focused on this strategy – whilst we have to pay attention and be agile to respond to national changes when necessary we must not become sidetracked from our approach. An innovative re-design of the Force has been implemented over the past 3 years and difficult decisions have been made in order to make sufficient savings following the cut in Government funding so the frontline can be strengthened rather than reduced. These include cuts in back office functions and senior management posts while other efficiency savings have been made through a reconfiguration of the police estate. As a result Surrey Police will put 200 extra officers on the frontline by the end of 2011. This reform agenda has reduced management and bureaucracy and enabled a more empowered frontline with more modern infrastructure and better technology. Shifting the balance of the frontline so far more of it is proactive both in ruthlessly tackling the criminal and improving responsiveness to local neighbourhood priorities has been a key success factor.

Surrey Police has an innovative approach to delivering value for money, detecting and reducing serious crime whilst sustaining public confidence and the quality of service provided to the people of Surrey.

3. Our priorities

Our strategic priorities for delivering policing services in Surrey are:

• Confidence and satisfaction – keeping public confidence in the police high and ensuring satisfaction with the service we deliver to local people

• Safety – keeping people safe from harm

• Value for money – making the most of our people and resources

4. The Financial Challenge

The scale of the financial challenge is significant, with the Force facing a Medium Term Financial Plan savings target of around £30 million over the five financial years from April 2011 to March 2016. Good progress has already been made to meet this challenge with many of the Force’s cost reduction and efficiency programmes already producing significant benefits with over £13 million planned from our Strategic Change programmes in 2011/12. In fact HMIC wrote in its September 2010 Police Authority Inspection Report that…”the Authority has a very effective approach to financial and resource planning. It has a good track record of delivering efficiency savings and achieving value for money. Its Local Policing Plan is aligned with a robust medium term financial plan (MTFP). Financial scrutiny challenge is well established and effective across the Authority. This is exemplified by the Operational Policing Review (OPR) which was established to help ensure a financially sustainable and effective Force to meet local priorities”.

Even prior to the most recent organisational restructuring, Surrey Police was assessed and praised by the Audit Commission: “The organisation manages its finance very effectively and demonstrates good value for money”.

Prudent financial planning and an early appetite to initiate fundamental programmes of change has placed Surrey Police in a good position to face future challenges.

5. Crime Performance

At the same time and despite the difficult challenges, the Force has delivered notable improvements in meeting public demands with both confidence and satisfaction levels increasing and crime levels decreasing. To summarise our performance for Quarter 2 (April – September 2011)

• Public confidence remains high with 88.7% of the public surveyed this financial year confident in their neighbourhood police compared to 88.2% in 2010/11. This continued high level of confidence mirrors the latest result from the British Crime Survey which shows Surrey continuing to have the highest level of confidence when compared to other Forces nationally.
• Customer satisfaction for anti-social behaviour (ASB) at the end of Quarter 2 stood at 78.2%, which is 1.5% higher than the level achieved in 2010/11 of 76.7% and is 2.2% points higher than the end of year Local Policing Plan target of 76%.
• At the end of quarter 2 the Force had recorded 7025 serious acquisitive and violence with injury crimes, this is a reduction in crime of 7.5% when compared to the same two quarters last year. The Force has recorded a year on year decrease in violence with injury of 17.4% and vehicle crime of 6%. The Force is currently on track to meet the end of year target of less than 13.6 serious crimes per 1,000 population (15138 crimes).
• The Force has recorded a serious crime detection rate of 19.4%, which is exceeding the Force end of year target of 18.6%. Latest performance demonstrates the continual improvement in the Force’s serious crime sanction detection rates when compared to performance end of 2009-10 of 17.1% and 2010-11 of 18.8%. The improvement in serious crime detection performance has been notable since the Force established Operation Sword in February 2011 with the strategic objective to bring force wide focus to increasing detection rates and reducing crime.
• Latest data shows the Force is recording a year on year increase in Domestic Burglary of 0.2%. This demonstrates an improvement from the end of Quarter 1 when the Force was recording a financial year on year increase of 12.9%. The Force is running an initiative throughout quarter 2 with Crimestoppers with the aim to reduce burglary by 10% and detect 10% more burglaries for the same period in 2010.

The latest National British Crime Survey (BCS) results, published last month, give us a good independent assessment of the public view of how we are doing. It revealed that we now have the highest overall public confidence in the country, which we believe demonstrates that we made the right decision to buck the trend of other forces and grow, rather than reduce, our front line. We are the first Force to achieve an overall confidence level of more than 80% and our current level of 81.7% is 10% higher than the national average and there are many other areas where we’ve shown notable improvement over the past five years, for example, we are now first nationally on the Community Understanding indicator (‘police understand the issues that affect this community’), up 16 places since March 2007.

The Force continues to improve public safety in Surrey by delivering crime reductions through a focus on prevention, disruption and dismantling of criminality – in the past two years 26 Organised Crime Groups have been successfully dismantled. There has also been a 12% reduction in the annual volume of crimes recorded since April 2007, a reduction in serious acquisitive crimes (including domestic burglary, robbery and vehicle crime) of 23%.

Surrey Police has an excellent foundation to continue its innovative approach to delivering value for money, improving confidence and detection rates and reducing crime while sustaining the quality of service provided to the people of Surrey.

Click here to  visit Surrey Police’s Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) page to assist with specific information on the Crime Comparator data. This page is periodically updated as we receive and answer your queries.

You can find more information on the performance of Surrey Police, including the quarterly performance reports presented to Surrey Police Authority, by clicking here.