‘Your free ride is coming to a close’, new Chief Constable warns criminals – as the scale of GMP’s historic problems are revealed
New Chief Constable Stephen Watson has revealed his plan for fixing Greater Manchester Police, warning criminals their ‘free ride’ is ‘coming to a close pretty rapidly’.
Mr Watson said some of his improvements will be felt quickly by the public, with a custody suite already reopened in Bolton and call waiting times for 101 and 999 well down on where they were in July.
He promised to ‘pursue offenders relentlessly’ where lines of inquiry exist, make neighbourhood policing teams directly contactable by the public and to instigate regular high profile operations to address specific localised concerns in communities, as well as a raft of measures aimed at tightening up GMP’s leadership, internal processes and external transparency.
His 16-page plan, which is publicly available, was presented to council leaders this morning and emerged at the same time as a report by Pricewaterhousecoopers – commissioned by the mayor nine months ago – was finally published, revealing devastating systemic failures across the force.
The Chief said the poor inspectorate report GMP received last December had in fact simply been ‘a symptom of a wider malaise’.
PwC had found frontline cops ‘disillusioned with the leadership’, believing senior officers were ‘quick to push blame down’, says its report. Its conclusions echo those of many officers spoken to by the M.E.N. for our investigation into the force’s culture.
The front line did not feel ‘appreciated’ or ‘valued’, PwC concluded, after a cultural survey of more than 700 officers elicited some of the worst comments it had ever seen during such an exercise – revealing ‘a real deficit in trust and confidence’.
Individual officers felt ‘left alone’, it said, identifying a ‘sense of constant blame and a failure to celebrate success has led to low morale’.
“Officers feel the force does not ‘have their back’ in times of crises; [a] sense that people are being blamed instead of GMP taking a look at institutional/systemic issues.”
The M.E.N. revealed the report’s existence and many of its key findings earlier this year.
Andy Burnham told councillors today that it had never originally been intended for publication, but simply to inform the new Chief Constable’s thinking.
However GMP today published the findings – the result of a visit to the force in January – as part of the Chief’s improvement strategy. The report had laid bare not only a negative and fearful culture, but a force unable to generate accurate or reliable data, without a clear picture of demand, any performance framework or a ‘consistent forcewide view’.
It found the ‘omnicompetency’ model introduced during austerity, which saw specialist units scrapped and officers instead expected to be generalists, had not worked at GMP, unlike in some other forces – leading neighbourhood officers struggling with enormous workloads.
In some cases victims were waiting days for officers to attend jobs that should have been dealt with in four hours.
Meanwhile GMP was not allocating officers to divisions appropriately, it concluded. Wigan, which had the highest demand, had fewer officers than Salford, Bolton or central Manchester.
Referrals to other agencies were poor and inconsistent. Abandoned 101 calls were too high, but the force was not recording how many people rang more than once, meaning it couldn’t analyse what was going on.
Too many police officers were also filling roles formerly done by civilian staff, it found – higher than in comparable forces, a source of frustration among the cops PwC spoke to – while mental health training was insufficient for the kind of cases officers were frequently dealing with.
The report also points to the beleaguered PoliceWorks element of the computer system iOPS, used by the frontline.
“Officer time is wasted waiting for systems to load, when time is better spent responding to incidents and resolving crimes,” it found of the much-hated system, adding that officers were wasting ‘hours’ on every shift as a result. Many had had to set up spreadsheets to work around the system, wasting more time.
There was no ability to view background intelligence built into the system, it found, echoing many concerns raised by officers in the last couple of years.
“iOPS is limiting police officers’ ability to carry out their roles.
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“The force should listen to staff and officers to understand the issues with iOPS and work on resolving priority problems.”
The new Chief’s forward plan is informed by PwC’s findings and, speaking to council leaders at the combined authority this morning, he acknowledged the force had a lot of work to do.
But he said the plan represents ‘a milestone in GMP’s recovery journey’, in a presentation that was warmly welcomed by town hall chiefs.
“I do not in any way want to dismiss some of the issues that have brought us to a place where the organisation is not performing as it ought,” he said, adding that he was now setting out clear, measurable promises to which he expects to be held to account.
Leadership will be fundamental to that, he said, as will performance management.
A team of new Chief Superintendents are due to begin in a few weeks, with one for each borough – reversing a move carried out under former Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahy.
GMP’s new Deputy Chief, Terry Woods, has already begun in post.
A new performance management framework is being introduced to help hold leaders at all levels of the force to account – and a similar report will now start going before the region’s police and crime panel as well.
Meanwhile a decision on whether to ‘fix or replace’ Police Works, the source of so much frustration for the front line, is now due within ‘weeks’.
Among GMP’s other promises are a pledge to cut 101 and 999 waiting times, a move the Chief told the M.E.N. was already proving successful.