Intelligent success

Ms Thornton, who is chief constable of Thames Valley Police, said the work being conducted in all 43 forces over the past three years to implement the NIM has highlighted the fact that the police service needs to improve the way it carries out tasking and co-ordination function.

As a result of this, ACPO has produced practice advice on tasking and coordination at the basic command unit (BCU) level (level 1) of NIM operation. The advice is aimed at tasking and coordination group chairs but also offers valuable information and advice to all staff involved in the tasking and coordination processes including intelligence managers, analysts, plan owners and other specialists. Describing the roles and responsibilities of staff working in the tasking and coordination function of NIM, the document provides practitioners with information to manage the strategic and tactical tasking and coordination process.

Ms Thornton explained: “The past three years have been working to implement NIM across the country and what we’ve found is a similar range of issues that have come up that are proving difficult. One those areas is the tasking and coordination meetings. This really is a key element of NIM and so we realised that it was an area that needed a bit more guidance.”

There are a number of reasons why tasking and coordination has been proving such a challenge to forces – the main reason being the fact that personnel who are trained in chairing the meetings often move onto other roles, explained Ms Thornton.

“There is definitely a lack of consistency in this area which has been causing us problems. What happens is that you get someone trained up to be able to chair the meetings and then they might secure promotion or move to another role and there’s a gap that needs to be filled. We are not as good at chairing meetings as we should be and so it’s an area that needs to be worked on.

“I also think the fact that meetings are held every two weeks means that it is a real commitment to undertake. We hope the practice guidance will address this by making information more readily available to everyone. What this will mean is that you won’t have to rely on training courses – you can access it from your desktop whenever it’s needed.”

Logistics and practical issues are only part of the reason why forces have been finding it difficult to carry out effective tasking and coordination, explains Ms Thornton and that instead, the reasons are much more complex and deeply embedded in the culture of the police service itself.

She said: “The very heart of policing has traditionally been profoundly reactive and not as future-oriented as we need to be; a real danger we need to continue to fight against.

“This is something that middle managers in the police service really need to get their heads around. The two key elements are crime prevention and risk management. When you think about it, this isn’t a new idea for the police service – it goes back to the time of Rowan and Mayne who both stressed that the principal duty of the police was crime prevention.”

Ms Thornton highlighted three key elements to tasking and coordination which she says police forces need to take on board and develop. The first is that they need good threat information, intelligence and analysis – this should form the foundation of their tasking and coordination work.

“Getting a good threat assessment and an understanding of the impact of an event is something that we need to get better at if we are to continue to develop the tasking and coordination process. To do this, we really need to get under the skin of the issue and focus on the impact the issue is having and then deciding the best response to this.”

The second element is to weigh up the competing demands and to assess where time and resources are best spent. This is an area Ms Thornton admits is and always will be a challenge for the service in years to come.

“We all acknowledge this is never going to be easy but it is a necessa