EQUALITY STANDARD FOR THE POLICE SERVICE

This continuous improvement framework is mainly for police use, but will also support police authorities in delivering their functions of scrutiny on behalf of the public. Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) will include aspects of the Standard in its inspections.

Key reasons for introducing a dedicated Equality Standard for policing

Past scrutiny of police equality performance - public inquiries and HMIC inspections - produced reactive action plans. To drive equality more effectively, we need to take a proactive approach using this dedicated framework.

Our local government delivery partners improved equality performance by using an equality framework.  We found that trying to use their framework added bureaucracy in 'translating' it to policing.  We needed our own dedicated framework.

Police service equality specialists asked for a dedicated improvement tool to support benchmarking and help them share effective practices. As resources diminish, there is a need to learn from each other and adopt activities that others have already shown to deliver equality.

The Standard is about improving confidence in the workforce and in the communities served by ensuring the different needs, perceptions and experiences are understood and taken into account when dealing with local concerns and priorities.

Development has been fully consultative

We had a National Key Working Group of equality specialists from representative forces and the Association of Police Authorities were involved in its development.  Further consultation included trades unions, staff associations and diversity staff support groups. We decided to focus the new framework on areas which past scrutiny had identified as having difficulties in progressing forward to delivering positive equality outcomes.

We ran a large three month trial in 11 forces - including the use of Welsh language - and incorporated the key learning. We also carried out wider consultation at government level, with a range of equality and community organisations and with community members. We found widespread support.  

We have linked the Equality Standard to Government and policing priorities

The Operational Delivery section is fully linked to delivery of citizen-focused policing and to initiatives to improve local policing performance. It will help forces to be responsive to local concerns including anti-social behaviour, quality of life issues and serious crime.

The People and Culture and Organisational Processes sections focus on how police forces are run. They support the building of organisational capability to achieve a diverse and productive workforce to help deliver value for money services to the public. Rather than focusing solely on recruitment,the Standard looks at improving retention and progression of those from under-represented groups to build a workforce that better reflects the communities served. Other coverage ensures that the procurement of clothing and equipment, and the management of buildings and infrastructure all deliver positive equality outcomes. These are areas with long-standing difficulties in delivery of equality.

The whole Standard supports the drive to deliver Customer Service Excellence.

Using the structure of the Equality Standard

The framework sets out an improvement journey across 22 areas of operational and organisational delivery.  Forces will be able to assess current performance and use gap analysis to formulate improvement plans for key units that relate to local priorities. The journey moves from specified day-to-day activity, through wider integration of equality activities, to outcomes that can be achieved in a number of ways. It is those differing ways to achieve those outcomes that forces can share and adopt. Benchmarking across the police service and sharing what has been shown to work is expected to lead to better use of resources over time.

This is not a tick-box approach so evidence of real delivery and positive outcomes is required. Evidence of delivery will include reviews of local policing plans, records of community engagement activity, recruitment and progression outcomes, evaluations of deployments and investigations plus specific parts of published reports.

The NPIA will continue to support use of the Equality Standard

As forces continue with implementing and using the Standard, we will provide implementation and general capability support and specialist Equality, Diversity and Human Rights advice, as required. We already facilitate regular regional meetings of police equality practitioners and have an Equality Standard user community on POLKA, the dedicated on-line police knowledge area, designed to facilitate communication, collaborative working and the sharing of effective practices across forces.

An Editorial Board of representative forces, supported by an adviser from the Equality and Human Rights Commission and a community representative, will be responsible for keeping the Standard challenging and strategic over time.