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Press
& Publicity
Tuesday 24 October 2006 - HPA670
HERTFORDSHIRE RATED A GOOD FORCE
FOR THE THIRD year in succession Hertfordshire Constabulary has been assessed as a “Good “ force by the Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC).
Chairman of Hertfordshire Police Authority, Ian Laidlaw-Dickson, said: “ This is the third year running that Hertfordshire has received a good report and I congratulate the Chief Constable and his officers and police staff for their hard work throughout the last year.
The HMIC’s assessment supports the Police Authority view that Hertfordshire has a very good police force that continues to strive for greater efficiency and improvement.”
Under the “Police Performance Assessment Framework” Hertfordshire was assessed on 7 main categories (domains), which can be graded excellent, good, fair or poor covering the wide spectrum of policing from preventing and detecting crime through to efficient use of resources to customer service and accessibility. The Constabulary was graded excellent for Local Policing, good for reducing crime, investigating crime, providing assistance, citizen focus and use of resources. The Constabulary was rated fair at promoting feelings of safety and had no poor grades. In addition the Constabulary’s performance was shown to have improved in four of these categories and stable in three. * see below for explanation of grades.
In addition to the Police Performance Assessment the HMIC has also published a more detailed “Baseline Assessment of the Constabulary. This report considers twenty-three individual categories of performance for which Hertfordshire Constabulary received nineteen goods, four fairs and no poors. The HMIC was impressed by Hertfordshire’s initiatives to work in partnership with local communities to find long term solutions to local problems, improvements in the speed in which calls are handled and some of the highest service satisfaction rates in the country.
The report highlighted three case studies of activity that the HMIC considered good practice worthy of dissemination to other forces. These were: the handling of media and communication issues during the Buncefield Oil Terminal explosion and fire; the initiatives to ensure that the force took full advantage of the Proceeds of Crime Act to seize criminals’ assets and the recalibration project which re-organised the Constabulary to ensure that officers and staff working arrangements fitted best with policing demands – releasing the equivalent of 91 officer posts for further policing work.
The HMIC also identified areas where the Constabulary could improve – in particular the requirement for increased training in investigation skills for officers interviewing prisoners to ensure that offenders admit more of their criminal activity and consequently more crimes are detected.
Ian Laidlaw-Dickson continued: “The Police Authority will be working with the Constabulary to ensure that the areas for improvement identified by the report are addressed and I am aware that many of these are already being progressed by the Constabulary”
Frank Whiteley Chief Constable said: “I am pleased that the many strengths of the Constabulary have been identified by the HMIC. I would like to thank all my officers and staff for their continuing hard work and professionalism that has delivered an overall very positive assessment of Hertfordshire Constabulary’s performance. We have a very solid platform to build on and I have every intention that we will continue to improve services to the people of Hertfordshire.”
*explanation of grades
Forces delivering better performance are assessed as excellent or good, forces delivering performance similar to their peers are assessed as fair, and forces delivering performance worse than their peers are assessed as poor.
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