Taylor reforms and the Met

Implementing cultural change in the county’s largest police force is quite a challenge. DCS Hamish Campbell talked to Police Professional Editor Steven DeVries about the spirit of the Taylor reforms and changing everyone’s thinking about professional standards.

When DCS Hamish Campbell returned to the Met from working on corruption in Sierra Leone last year, he was given no small feat to accomplish.

He was given charge of professional standards in the country’s largest police force, which meant that the implementation of the Taylor reforms landed in his lap.

“In the year that I’d been away, the Taylor reforms had actually progressed to the stage where the Taylor Review had been completed and the Home Office had started to negotiate around the country,” said DCS Campbell.

Taylor represents more than a way of dealing with conduct and performance – it requires forces to realise full cultural change, to change everyone’s thinking, from the frontline staff and support to ACPO movers and shakers.

“Since last year there’s been a sort of slow, behind-the-scenes adoption of the principles of Taylor, which moves from the view of sanction and blame and fault-finding – they all have their place but the main piece is managing people,” said DCS Campbell. “They come to work, most of them with the best intention in the world. But things can go wrong and we have to manage that as performance in the workplace, not interpret it as criminal activity or see it from a management/discipline role where there’ll be an investigation because ‘we are investigators, aren’t we’ so everything becomes an investigation. We need to move away from that.”

The Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) has already been hard at work trying to establish Taylor. DCS Campbell chairs a working group which involves representatives from the force federation, human resources and some pilot sites where the spirit of the reforms are already being practiced – most notably in Camden.

The working group started by addressing the tactical challenges, educating associates about the new forms to be used, new procedures for misconduct hearings, the training of 5,000 sergeants, of inspectors, and also of ACPO leaders who sit on the misconduct panels. Training sergeants to take back responsibility for their officer’s lighter infractions has carried on at a steady pace, and between now and when Taylor is fully introduced in November 2008, the DPS will continue its communications strategy meant to foster the cultural change that will free up investigation time for the most serious offences and decentralise minor infractions to the local level, where they will be dealt with as management issues, not gross misconduct.

“At the moment Professional Standards departments – us included – investigate matters that have no prospect of an officer being dismissed from the police service,” said DCS Campbell.

The new procedures ensure that misconduct hearings aren’t the only way to deal with a complaint about an officer – line supervisors will make early assessments as to whether or not the complaint can be dealt with locally, or if they are grievous enough to be sent to DPS for an investigation and hearing. Taylor spells the difference out very clearly, but it’s a challenge UK-wide for forces to make them second nature.

It’s is a responsibility local line managers haven’t had to carry for a long time – as human resources departments became more relied upon for employee matters – but DCS Campbell said it’s about local accountability, which means many of them will embrace the chance to better manage their staff and apply the lessons of their mistakes.

Because the spirit of Taylor is less about punishing, the toolkits have changed for dealing with employees. Because most matters won’t go to misconduct panels, the management meetings with inspectors and chief inspectors that replace those panels will be opportunities to give the staff member training, advice and guidance. Demotions have