Template for collaboration

In light of the shelved merger plans, the service has been asked by the Government to look at ways to implement greater collaboration between forces in the area of protective services. New research by the Superintendents’ Association provides advice to BCUs on how this can be successfully implemented.

The HMIC report Closing the Gap showed the majority of forces in England and Wales did not have the capability to deliver what it termed ‘protective services’ such as counterterrorism activity and dealing with serious and organised crime. The report, produced by Denis O’Connor was an important precursor to the Government’s announcement that all forces and police authorities should develop proposals for reconfiguring forces.

Despite the fact it was announced in June this year that the proposed mergers would be shelved, concern has been expressed by the Superintendents’ Association that many of the issues highlighted in the report still need to be addressed and should be ignored by the service at its peril. Chief constables have now been asked by the Home Office to outline their thoughts on how greater collaboration could be achieved to address the level two gap.

The Superintendents’ Association, which has been an ardent supporter of the suggestion there should be a national police force run to national standards at a local level, has recognised the importance of taking this work forward in light of the shelved mergers and future plans for forces to take part in greater collaboration.

Association Vice-President Ian Johnston explained: “We want to very much echo the views of Denis O’Connor that unless we address this level two gap then the concern is that it will get worse. There is without a doubt a gap in our ability to deal with some of these protective services issues and that is the whole reason why the merger call was made by the HMI.

“What we’re saying is that gaps have not gone away and that the challenges identified by the HMI are still there.

“If the police service is now going to look at greater collaboration then out of collaboration will come departments to address the gaps we talked about.”

Plans for greater collaboration will affect the rank of superintendent and chief superintendent because they will be required to set up new departments or merge existing departments in the process and so the Association has conducted its own research into how that might effectively be achieved. It tasked Supt Johnston and his colleague former Chief Supt Tim Moorby with carrying out research into how larger forces dealt with protective services with a view to gleaning best practice.

Their research involved visits to the Met, West Yorkshire, West Midlands, Strathclyde and the Garda in Ireland. Their experiences now form the basis of a checklist they have produced for members to advise them on the most effective way forward for collaborations to address this level two gap.

Supt Johnston said: “The whole point of our work starts from the premise that greater collaboration won’t work simply by combining what you’ve already got. You have to go back to the beginning and create new structures and procedures in order to make collaboration work, which will of course be a challenge to the police service. What we have done is to produce an outline of the way we recommend this can be achieved.

“This very much builds on the work we have carried out in recent years around what makes a BCU effective in terms of its management team, the structure of it and who does what and why.”

An important starting point to their work was the definition of protective services and what it actually means in a policing context. The HMIC report defined protective services as being the service’s ability to deal with counter-terrorism and extremism and serious organised and cross border crime.

The Association has widened the definition to also include the areas of civil contingencies and emergency planning, critical incident manag