Old Colwyn East Residents Association
Interview with Mr Tom O’Donnell, Police Director of Finance, with relation to the letter from Tony McNulty Police Minister.
On Tuesday 27th March 2007, I was pleased when Mr O’Donnell agreed to speak to me about the contents of the letter which I received through David Jones MP from Tony McNulty MP, Minister of State with responsibility for policing.
We started the conversation speaking about the hopes for the future of Air Support. The force presently funds the whole cost on a leased basis and it is hoped that the next generation aircraft may be funded by a grant and possibly shared with Cheshire, if the details can be worked out to gain cost savings.
I explained that the Old Colwyn East Residents Association had become involved in writing letters about the police funding issue when our CBM was moved with 23 other officers into the new control room at St Asaph. It was blamed at the time on Government under funding but in the precept meeting, Mr Brunstrom had said that it had been intended to put the officers into the Control Room in any case to improve the mix of personnel.
One hundred and twenty police staff have gone and that was also blamed on government under funding however the intimation in the letter from Mr McNulty is that sufficient funding is given, but it is a matter for the Chief Constable to decide how the money is spent. I said that this intimated that there may be areas where money had been spent on particular issues such as the new Control Room at St Asaph which had maybe swallowed money to the detriment of local policing.
Mr Donnell said that there had been an element of having to make the Control Room work, there had been a number of staffing and sickness issues which had had to be resolved but the premises was a major step forward in the Police Force response to the future of policing and the technology used is second to none.
I asked if what we had seen with the 120 posts was part of a reallocation of posts
generally where the force had looked at the posts which were necessary and acted
accordingly not particularly because of under-
Mr O’Donnell showed me a chart of the treasury funding over the last several years and pointed to the future years where there was an indication that treasury funding may be much lower at possibly
2% increase (or just marginally above). The measures taken recently had been caused by these projections. North Wales Police has realised the trend with funding and is proactive about putting itself in a position to be more able to cope with funding changes in future. It has had to examine each of its processes with a view to becoming leaner and more productive. It has identified areas where cost benefits can be made and these benefits will ensure that the force can live within its means if budgets are reduced.
Through all of this examination, Mr O’Donnell said that the force sees the further development of Neighbourhood Policing as paramount.
The force has made significant changes in the way it deals with its various functions.
Instead of having staff in 39 various departments dealing with various functions
to achieve service delivery with little or no interdepartmental sharing of information
(what he termed silo thinking), the force is now geared up to sharing all information
in just two inter-
Mr O’Donnell by use of various graphs showed me the productivity of the police force. It was obvious that the North Wales Police force is very proud of its national position with a high crime detection rate and it is obvious that a great deal of effort has gone into achieving that position.
We spoke about this improvement in terms of recording crime and incidents. I gave an example of a high volume of identifiable graffiti incidents in Old Colwyn, not recorded as crime when committed. A Prestatyn youth was discovered to be committing other graffiti crimes and it was obvious that he had done the crimes in Old Colwyn. Officers were keen to amass the photographs of the Old Colwyn graffiti to put to the offender in interview when he would be charged with the Old Colwyn incidents. All these crimes would have been detected crimes. However many crimes, there were would have shown a 100% detection rate. This type of recording could skew the average significantly I pointed out.
Mr O’Donnell said that the Force is very good at the detection of volume crime but accepts that it needs to do better at dealing with issues which matter to communities in order to reassure them. That is the push of Dyna Ddigon and we will see great strides in community policing this year as the total of 307 CBMs and PCSOs makes an impact across the force (99 extra PCSOs), community policing is being made a priority and the Chief Constable will soon be conducting road shows for all staff to this effect, to ensure that there is good leadership.
I replied that at the local level, we hear the police saying they are doing well but we have gangs fighting in the street, the two things are at odds with each other. People have become disaffected from ringing the police to report matters due to an historical lack of response due to the grading of incidents.
Police statistics are based totally on calls to the police.
No calls no statistics. That is not a true reflection of matters at street level but remains the yardstick for the deployment of personnel.
We have good relationship with local officers but community policing is part time 4 days a week for each officer less leave and other duty commitments and abstractions.
We are seeing beneficial changes in the way community issues are being dealt with at divisional level in support of CBMs PCSOs
I would like to see PCSOs sworn in as special constables; they should have the power of a constable if they are seen as the way forward for local policing.
Mr O’Donnell thought that a good idea and said he would like to see other sector workers sworn in and trained.
I asked about the issue of points issued for various matters dealt with by officers as a means of measuring productivity and asked if that is seen as the best way. Mr O’Donnell said that the Police Force is looking very carefully about how it can measure the whole issue of community policing to measure productivity in that area. It is very important to get this right he reassured me because what is measured is what gets done.
He said that they are getting a message that response officers are over-
Mr O’Donnell replied that it is often found that the senior constables at a station can be two or 3 yrs service which is not ideal but has come about as a result of the investment in new officers.
I also pointed out that many of the officers on response duties were young in service and that was not the best deployment for officers who were expected to secure the best possible evidence on first service. It often worked against the interest of justice in the later stages of an investigation.
Mr O’Donnell was given a copy of Mr McNulty’s letter and line by line dealt with the issues raised. He agreed that the Treasury had funded the police force with a significant increase in resources over a sustained period. There were few statements in the letter that he did not agree with.
The fourth paragraph of the letter deals with an estimated £20million from a range of other Government funding. This funding usually has strings attached but the force has taken advantage of the grants to improve the force response.
An example of this was the issue of PCSOs where the government paid 100% for the first year reducing to 75% in the second. There is no inflation allowed for in specific grants.
He was particularly concerned with the Home Office, whose job it is to put the police case for funding to the Treasury. The Home Office is unresponsive to bids for natural inflationary issues such as pay rises, increments and the reduction to 75% of government payment for the PCSOs. The Home Office tend to be linear in its budgetary thinking; it is not in its own interest to be otherwise. The police force still has to pay for all these costs with no extra money from the Government.
That is the cause of the requirement for an increase in precept to make up the shortfall, especially where the need for Protective Services is perceived. Increases in precept are however subject to capping and that has impacted on this years round. The Police Authority could only manage a precept of 6.75%.
The police force can employ 20 to 40 staff per million pounds (roughly speaking). A police officer with National Insurance and other costs is roughly £50K.
I pointed out that the SWIFT 1500 questionnaire was used as a mandate that overwhelmingly people want to pay precept more for local policing but only 860 of the 1500 replied. This is hardly overwhelming. Mr O’Donnell replied that statistically that is seen as a good response.
In paragraph seven he took issue with the number of police officers shown as 1572, this he said should have shown a planned strength of 1605 officers.
With the issue of the commitment of NWP to increase the time spent by police officers on front line duties to from 40% to 67% by March 2008, Mr O’Donnell said the force was on track to achieve that figure in 2007.
I asked about the designation of police officers in the Control Room as being on front line duties as per a reply to our letter to the Chief Constable. This is not in the spirit of being on patrol as intended by the Government. I was assured that the officers in Control Room were not front line in the way that officers on patrol were and do not figure in the front line duties target above.
North Wales Police is subject to a funding formula which affects all forces and is designed to take money away from rural forces and redistribute it to the city forces where the Home Office see the majority of crime happens and particularly London, the Metropolitan Police and Home Office have benefited from this formula by £150M.
David Curtis
Secretary
