Norfolk Police good at deterring crime but must improve sex offender management, report finds

A new report has found that Norfolk Police is good at preventing and deterring crime - but needs to improve how it manages sex offenders.

The force is charging more criminals than any other in the country and has made significant efforts to improve investigation standards, according to its latest inspection report.

However, the constabulary needs to improve the way it responds to the public, how risk assessments are managed in some domestic abuse cases, and how sex offenders are managed in the community.

Chief Constable Paul Sanford said the force remained committed to providing “exceptional policing” to the people of Norfolk and, with the right funding in place, would work hard to make improvements in areas identified by inspectors.

In the latest Police Effectiveness Efficient and Legitimacy (PEEL) inspection, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Service (HMICFRS) assessed Norfolk across ten areas of policing, with graded judgements made in nine of the areas as follows:

• Outstanding

- Recording data about crime

• Good

- Preventing crime

• Adequate

- Police powers and public treatment

- Investigating crime

- Developing a positive workplace

- Leadership and force management

• Requires improvement

- Responding to the public

- Protecting vulnerable people

- Managing offenders

HMICFRS provides an ungraded judgement on the service it provides to victims of crime but uses findings in this area when making overall judgements.

Mr Sanford said: “This report highlights the constabulary has many strengths including preventing and deterring crime, while also having an effective neighbourhood policing offer which understands and responds to the needs of local communities.

“The report shows we work effectively with partners to effectively tackle emerging and persistent antisocial behaviour, and that we have the highest outcome rate for offences brought to justice compared to other forces in England and Wales.

“Inspectors graded the constabulary as ‘outstanding’ for the way we record crime. This means that we can have high confidence in our crime statistics, with the most recent showing that crime has fallen in Norfolk by 11.6%.”

During the assessment, carried out in April this year, inspectors raised concerns with how the growing numbers of sex offender were being managed in the community, along with concerns around the safeguarding of children at risk of online abuse.

The concerns related to workload demand and training within the Public Protection Unit (PPU) and the Safeguarding Children Online Team (SCOLT), which through investment, has now been resolved.

Mr Sanford said: “While I accept the findings in this report, I have to be realistic about the measures we can put in place to make the necessary improvements, all of which require investment either in people or technology.

“We moved people from one part of the organisation to support our PPU and SCOLT teams, but this clearly comes at an expense to other areas of the constabulary.”

HMICFRS said the constabulary needs to be quicker in answering 999 and 101 calls and to reduce 101 call abandon rates.

Nationally, forces are expected to answer 90% of 999 calls within an average of ten seconds.

In Norfolk, the force answers 87.1% of 999 calls in that timeframe - and was the fourth best performing county in answering 999 calls when the inspection was carried out.

Mr Sanford added: “We’ve made significant investment in our control room since 2021 to improve our call handling and response times.

“In the last report, HMICFRS asked us to make sure call handlers triaged calls and recorded them correctly to better understand risk. We’ve done this, which is acknowledged in this report, but the longer we spend on the phone triaging calls, the longer it will take for us to get to calls waiting in the queue.

“In the last 12 months, we answered 101 calls in an average of 5:09 minutes. For a non-emergency number, I believe that this is an acceptable waiting time, however at peak times callers are often having to wait longer and when that occurs some of them are abandoning the call.

“I want to reduce the frequency with which these abandoned calls happen. We believe that many of those who abandon the call, do so having heard an automated message informing them that they can report incidents via our website, but we’re unable to prove that.

“HMICFRS state that we should be investing in better technology to help us to manage non-emergency calls and I firmly agree with this. Next month we hope start a pilot of new technology to assist us with some calls for service and we believe that this will lead to improvements.”

The report also stated improvements were needed to how the force protects vulnerable people, with concerns highlighted around information sharing with partner agencies.

Mr Sanford said: “This is a priority area for the constabulary, and we are continually striving to improve.

“We recognise the huge benefits of working with partners in this field and we are due to review our Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) where some of these issues are occurring.”

Since the last inspection published in October 2022, HMICFRS recognised improvements made in the recording the reasons for stop and searches taking place, as well as better internal and external scrutiny over the use of these powers.

The report further acknowledges work made to enhance crime investigation and management, with “victims at the forefront” of this improvement with “tailored support and timely contact” offered to victims of crime.