Agenda item

Summary of recent Reviews of Police Complaints

Report of the Town Clerk.

Minutes:

Members considered a report of the Town Clerk providing a summary of recent reviews of Police complaints and the following points were made.

 

·         The Chair noted that a review of the new process had been planned after three months of operation but, due to COVID, would now take place in January 2021. The Review Panel was meeting on a monthly basis and training would be made available to Members.

 

·         The Deputy Head of Police Authority Board highlighted that there was a bias towards reviews of complaints relating to Action Fraud, and not many complaints regarding the Force’s core business, which was positive. Of the complaints made regarding Action Fraud, the Review Panel was seeing about a third. The Review Panel generally felt that the Force could make better explanations of the process through which cases were referred on for investigation or not, and that explanations should be presented in layman’s terms as far as was possible. Complaint responses were often a comprehensive end to end summary of process, but with scant detail on the key areas concerning the complainant. The Authority would welcome the opportunity to work with the Force to improve this.

 

·         A Member noted he was present at the June 2020 Review Panel and requested the record be updated accordingly.

 

·         The Chair noted that she was concerned that feedback from the Force had not been received on the recommendations put to the Force by the Panel, particularly recommendations arising from the July 2020 panel meeting. This was particularly important as the new process was designed to foster a learning culture rather than one of blame – lack of response from the Force suggested that the learning culture had yet to be embraced. Lastly, a Member of the Panel had flagged the potential GDPR issue around the use of algorithms to analyse crime reports and refer them on for investigation. Timely feedback from the Force on Panel recommendations would be welcome going forward.

 

·         The Head of the Professional Standards Directorate noted that the Directorate had only recently taken on responsibility for managing Action Fraud complaints and recruited a new member of staff for that purpose. Panel recommendations were taken seriously and the Directorate was working with both Action Fraud and the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau to make improvements. The new member of staff would attend the November 2020 meeting to brief Members on their role.

 

·         The Chair requested a report at a future meeting outlining other avenues of appeal open to complainants e.g. the Ombudsman.

 

RESOLVED, that the report be received.

 

 

 

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