Up to 38 million hours of police time, equal to over 21,358 officers, can be freed up over the next 5 years is the headline finding from the Policing Productivity Review report published by the Home Office in November 2023. My insight into the review draws on experience gained from involvement in well over a hundred projects in the last 20 years that have sought to help the police service manage demand more effectively and efficiently, primarily during my time as a director of Process Evolution. In it, I’ll argue that many of the cited opportunities will be difficult to realise, but provide a pointer to other opportunities that police forces can exploit now to improve their productivity.
Where does the 21,358 officer capacity release come from?
The Policing Productivity Review report contains 26 recommendations, with the capacity release coming from 14 of these. I’ve grouped these below:
- 245 FTE nationally (1.1% of the total capacity release identified) would come from all forces adopting the changes to Crime Recording
- 1594 FTE (7.5%) can be made through implementing Right Care Right Person (RCRP), improved working with the CPS and changes to Redaction
- the latter requiring the adoption of new technology and potentially a legislative change
- 3777 officers’ worth of capacity (17.7%) could come from reducing sickness and the number of officers on recuperative duties
- this assumes that the latter are not making any contribution which in my experience is not true
- 5301 officers (24.8%) come from releasing officers from back office and control room posts
- albeit presumably many would need to be replaced with civilian staff who would require funding
- 1947 (9%) would come from adopting “Model Processes”
- 8484 (39.7%) officer equivalents of capacity could come from exploiting technology
Can this capacity be released?
The findings above are grouped and sorted by how practical I think it will be for police forces to realise the potential gains.
The crime recording changes should be straight forward to implement and will save officer time (not to mention reducing crime levels!). In my experience, crime recording as a whole is an area where process inefficiency is common, with risk aversity and computer systems contributing factors.
RCRP already has proof of concept in Humberside, and although requiring partner agency engagement should be achievable. Again, our project work concurs that this is a recurring opportunity across forces. Similarly, more streamlined charging processes and a reduction in redaction workload are significant opportunities as shown in investigation process models I have built. However, new technology, partner engagement and potentially a legislative change are required to release this capacity.
As I have indicated above, I would question the size of opportunity from the workforce-related recommendations; recuperative officers often make a contribution even if not fully deployable, and although there may be some officers in posts that could be dispensed with, the control room, for example, is often seen as an area where having some police presence is beneficial from a demand reduction perspective.
The largest opportunity is based upon technology, with almost 40% of capacity release to come from this. Not my area of expertise, but as the report admits, adopting new technology has historically been a challenge for policing, so suffice to say I’ve put this in the most challenging and difficult to realise category.
Finally, the Model Process concept. I think that there is some opportunity here, but perhaps not in the way that is described in the report. As it needs further development, I’ve put it ahead of Technology in terms of practicality but behind the other opportunities.
Conclusion
From my perspective, that means of the cited 21,358 officer equivalent of capacity release, only 1,849 (8.7%) is in the reasonably practical to achieve group, with perhaps some incremental further opportunity to drive down some sickness in those forces with significantly higher sickness rates.
In turn, 1,849 represents 1.25% of police officer strength in England and Wales as of March 2023. Do I think that there is only a 1.25% productivity opportunity that police forces can easily realise? NO – there is much more than that!
However, that will be the topic of a separate blog where I’ll elaborate on my thoughts in relation to the Model Process concept. I’ll also reference some of the other findings from the Policing Productivity Review and set out some of the opportunities that I and my colleagues at Process Evolution have found over the last 20 years or so, all using business analytics and predictive modelling.