By David Williams
11 March 2010
The police regulator is to publish more data in an easily understood format online, in an effort to make its assessments more relevant to ordinary people.
The Inspectorate of Constabulary will launch MyPolice.org.uk on March 13. It will offer searchable and detailed assessments on value for money and performance for forces across England and Wales. The site’s approach resembles that of the Audit Commission’s Oneplace website, which started last December.
The inspectorate also published its first national performance tables on March 11. These grade constabularies on a four-point scale from ‘poor’ to ‘excellent’ in three broad areas: local policing; protection from serious harm; and community confidence.
Chief inspector Denis O’Connor said a set of value-for-money profiles, due on March 18, would amount to ‘a blitz on where the money is going and what decisions are being made’.
He said: ‘We’re not going to go back to having more central targets, but we want the citizen not to be disadvantaged because they don’t have decent information.’
O’Connor said there was substantial variation across forces in how much was being spent on management, community policing, intelligence and control rooms. These could explain variations in performance, he said.
Lawrence Morris, head of performance at the inspectorate, denied that the new approach was an attempt to justify the watchdog’s existence in the face of mounting hostility to centralised regulation.
But, he admitted, the future was uncertain for regulators. ‘We’ll probably get cut,’ he told Public Finance. ‘Everybody’s going to get cut. We can’t influence it. But the value-for-money profiles have gone down really well with the Treasury and Downing Street.’
O’Connor also called on forces to spend more money on information technology to better understand local patterns of antisocial behaviour.
Data on antisocial behaviour is still being gathered, but will be published on the MyPolice site later this year.
The inspectorate’s grading revealed only four out of 43 forces received a top rating in any area, with Lancashire and Merseyside the best overall. At the other end of the scale, Nottinghamshire received ‘poor’ ratings across the board.
11 March 2010
The police regulator is to publish more data in an easily understood format online, in an effort to make its assessments more relevant to ordinary people.
The Inspectorate of Constabulary will launch MyPolice.org.uk on March 13. It will offer searchable and detailed assessments on value for money and performance for forces across England and Wales. The site’s approach resembles that of the Audit Commission’s Oneplace website, which started last December.
The inspectorate also published its first national performance tables on March 11. These grade constabularies on a four-point scale from ‘poor’ to ‘excellent’ in three broad areas: local policing; protection from serious harm; and community confidence.
Chief inspector Denis O’Connor said a set of value-for-money profiles, due on March 18, would amount to ‘a blitz on where the money is going and what decisions are being made’.
He said: ‘We’re not going to go back to having more central targets, but we want the citizen not to be disadvantaged because they don’t have decent information.’
O’Connor said there was substantial variation across forces in how much was being spent on management, community policing, intelligence and control rooms. These could explain variations in performance, he said.
Lawrence Morris, head of performance at the inspectorate, denied that the new approach was an attempt to justify the watchdog’s existence in the face of mounting hostility to centralised regulation.
But, he admitted, the future was uncertain for regulators. ‘We’ll probably get cut,’ he told Public Finance. ‘Everybody’s going to get cut. We can’t influence it. But the value-for-money profiles have gone down really well with the Treasury and Downing Street.’
O’Connor also called on forces to spend more money on information technology to better understand local patterns of antisocial behaviour.
Data on antisocial behaviour is still being gathered, but will be published on the MyPolice site later this year.
The inspectorate’s grading revealed only four out of 43 forces received a top rating in any area, with Lancashire and Merseyside the best overall. At the other end of the scale, Nottinghamshire received ‘poor’ ratings across the board.
