The result of the Force’s HMICFRS PEEL inspection was published in March 2023. This highlighted several areas for improvement, including the need to obtain a more detailed understanding of demand and ensuring it had the right capacity and capability to service that demand. Furthermore, concerns were raised around the timeliness of the Force’s response to incidents.

While immediate steps had successfully ben taken by the Force to improve response performance, it wanted to use its data to provide a robust, sustainable, evidence-based assessment of response resource requirements.

Process Evolution’s Approach

Process Evolution undertook a comprehensive data collection and analysis exercise, supported by several focus groups consisting of response officers and management teams. Assessment of the historic demand, workload and resourcing data, alongside benchmarking against other UK Forces, provided confidence that the response function was not under-resourced but identified that the existing resources were not being utilised as effectively as they could be.

Simulation modelling enabled Process Evolution to quantify the impact of changing resource locations, deployment protocols and shift patterns on the Force’s capability to provide a timely response; in particular reducing the variability in performance across different geographical areas and allocating resources fairly across the commands.

Results

Process Evolution recommended several changes to the allocation and deployment processes of response resources including:

• Rebalancing of Establishment resourcing across the commands to better match demand requirements, while allowing for differences in the geographical makeup of each area
  • Alongside recommended minimum staffing levels which are achievable and in balance with these Establishments
• Changes to shift patterns within the existing core structure to address previous reductions in resources at peak demand times and to reduce variability in day-to-day resourcing levels
• Implementation of a forward deployment plan to improve the consistency of resource availability and to reduce the variability in immediate response performance across geographical areas

Furthermore, our modelling approach demonstrated to North Yorkshire Police that a hybrid response/neighbourhood model was not an appropriate model for the Force at this time. Implementing our recommendations will enable the Force to improve immediate and priority response performance and reduce geographical variability at no additional resource cost.

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Warwickshire Police is one of the smaller Forces in England and Wales. However, it borders onto six others (including one Metropolitan area) and has a significant road infrastructure, all of which contribute to its demand profile.

The Operational Communications Centre (OCC) was struggling to meet the 999 call answering target, and the mean answer time for 101 calls had been declining over time. Similarly, the true demand on the digital desk was unknown.

Warwickshire Police wanted support to design an efficient operating model to meet key performance indicators (KPIs) across the different demand streams. This included identifying the staffing requirements on a new 101 triage desk, and the subsequent impact on call handler requirements.

Process Evolution’s Approach

Process Evolution carries out detailed analysis of telephony, digital desk and resource data to understand the balance between demand, resourcing, processes and performance. As a result of the baseline work, a series of modelling scenarios for different operating models were created.

The analysis and outcomes from practitioner workshops enabled our Call Profiler software tool to be used to create a virtual replica of the OCC. With this, iterations of the identified modelling scenarios were carried out to identify the optimum operating model and staffing requirements to meet desired call answer performance targets.

Findings

A new operating model was designed in collaboration with Warwickshire Police which introduced a new 101 triage desk, a pool of 999 and 101 call handlers, and a Digital Desk that could be ‘interrupted’ to handle 999 calls when required.

This new model required a similar number of staff to the current model while offering improved 999 call handling performance and increased resilience during times of peak demand.

Shift pattern options that maintained the current core rota structures were identified that supported the new operating model and allowed call answer performance targets to be met.

In Summary

• The new operating model would improve performance
• To implement the new model, a small uplift of 1.9 FTE would be required
• The proposed shift pattern allowed for a ‘smoothed’ consistent hourly resourcing pool
• Any reduction in staffing numbers would increase the call abandonment rate
• All of these aspects allow the OCC to improve performance in meeting demand with current resource levels

Outcome

Immediately following completion of the review, Warwickshire Police used the results to successfully ‘bed in’ a new 101 triage desk.

As part of Phase II within their OCC change programme, Warwickshire Police are using Process Evolution’s findings to support the design and implementation of the new operating model.

Mike Smith, Chief Superintendent for Public Contact said:

“Process Evolution helped us to design a new operating model in our contact management centre across our 999, 101 and digital desk workload. They were knowledgeable and professional, and clearly explained the impacts of decisions and assumptions that we made along the way.“

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Warwickshire Police needed to make savings of £3M from its annual budget. At the same time, Response Policing was under pressure with reports of rising demand, work overflowing to Neighbourhood Teams and concern for officer wellbeing.

Process Evolution was commissioned to identify options for financial savings while alleviating the pressure on Response Policing.

Process Evolution’s Approach

Process Evolution undertook a robust baselining of the demand placed on Response Policing. This involved analysis of data from incident and crime systems together with a series of practitioner workshops to identify hidden demand. Comparing the outputs with our benchmarking data enables us to identify potential improvements that were tested using our Response Profiler simulation model.

Findings

We presented a menu of options to Warwickshire Police and worked with the Force to combine these into a preferred solution. The recommendations included:

• Reviewing incident grading policy
• Implementing an office-based demand reduction unit to resolve incidents without deployment
• Increasing the contribution of Roads Policing to local incident response
• Adjusting the Response shift pattern to better match resource availability to when incidents are reported
• Better exploitation of mobile technology

Outcome

Warwickshire Police implemented Process Evolution’s recommendations in full, enabling the required savings to be realised and backlogs of outstanding incidents to be removed, therefore releasing time for health and wellbeing activities.

Alexander Franklin-Smith, Assistant Chief Constable said:

“Process Evolution’s work informed a number of fundamental changes to our policing model which continue to serve us and our communities well. They’re very professional, comprehensive and thorough”

To download the full case-study. Simply head to our policing page. For more insights and updates, stay connected with our ongoing conversations at www.processevolution.co.uk or reach out to us via email at info@processevolution.co.uk

Lincolnshire Police is one of the lowest funded Forces in terms of total funding per head of population in England and Wales. The budgeted headcount for detectives in its Public Protection department had remained unchanged for several years, despite increased demand and complexity of cases.

With all departments in the Force similarly experiencing rising demand, the Force needed to better understand the demand for Public Protection services and ensure that it was making best use of its existing capacity to enable the case for additional investment to be assessed.

Process Evolution’s Approach

Process Evolution undertook a robust baselining of the demand placed on Public Protection. This involved analysis of data from incident and crime systems together with a series of practitioner workshops to map the investigative processes for RASSO (Rape and Serious Sexual Offences) and Child Abuse cases. The outputs were fed into our Investigation Profiler modelling software to enable the resource requirements to be accurately calculated. We used our geographical optimisation software to assess the hub locations where officers were based.

Findings

The key findings were that:

• Budgeted officer numbers were about right, but challenges were caused by high levels of vacancy
  • This was being compounded by increasing absence rates attributed to work pressures from the resource shortfall
• A hub-based model with officers investigating child abuse and RASSO cases was more efficient than centrally based specialist teams due to the large geography of Lincolnshire
• Adding a fourth hub to the existing three would make a saving in travel time of around 1.5 ful ime equivalent detectives
• Several process improvement options were identified, including the recruitment of case workers as a quick means of reducing the resourcing gaps

Outcome

Lincolnshire Police have subsequently implemented a fourth hub, aligning with other investigative capability, including custody suites. This has been accompanied by an increase in supervision and additional headcount to bring resource levels closer to establishment.

As Uplift officers flow into the Force, further increase is planned from February 2024, and the establishment has been raised to cope with expected continued increases in demand.

Liz Rodgers, Head of Public Protection said:

“There is a clear message that based on the evidence provided though Process Evolution, the Force is investing resources into this area of PVP business. This has been recognised by staff working within the teams and we are starting to see improvements in supervision, morale and culture”

To download the full case-study, simply head to our police page. For more insights and updates, stay connected with our ongoing conversations at www.processevolution.co.uk or reach out to us via email at info@processevolution.co.uk

Opening Context

Leaders of EMOpSS (East Midland Operational Support Service) credited Process Evolution with ‘breaking some myths’ about how policing was being delivered and providing the detailed evidence to develop a new integrated service covering four counties that has improved performance as well as produced cashable savings of £5.2 million in its first year.

Findings & Recommendations

Findings

• Low utilisation of specialist personnel. Forces could not account for what firearms officers were doing between 30 and 50 per cent of the time, even though the chance of a firearms callout happening in one day was just 3%.
• Higher incidents of crime in cross-border areas at the periphery of individual county police forces.

 “Officers will always tell you that they are very busy. What the data showed us was that their utilisation against their specific skillset was generally fairly low.”  Chief Superintendent

Recommendations

The change team considered a range of reorganisation options and assessed these with evidence and advice from Process Evolution. This resulted in the following main final recommendations:

• Combine roads policing, serious collision investigation, armed policing and a range of specialist training across the four counties of Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire.
• Create this new East Midland Operational Support Service (EMOpSS) with borderless command to cover 5,255 square miles and 2.9 million people.
• Bring together responsibility for roads and armed response into a new unit called RARV (Roads and Armed Response Vehicles) to increase officer utilisation, whilst improving flexibility in responding to demand across the region.
• Standardise firearms and other specialist training programmes across EMOpSS to reduce costs and abstraction rates.

Outcomes from the Project

Performance improvements

After the initial two-month transition period, the newly reorganised service was achieving high standards of performance and these standards were maintained or improved in the months ahead.

Budget savings

The implemenation of EMOpSS resulted in a combined real-term budget reduction of £5.2 million per annum compared to the original baseline cost in the first year. In the following year, the budget was reduced again by a further £1.5 million.

Improved focus and flexibility

Specialist teams and command structures, determined by need instead of the traditional geographic borders of those forces, are allowing officers to quickly respond to incidents where the need is greatest.

Resilience in the face of new threats

The combined operational force has greater capacity and resilience to respond to major threats such as terrorism.

In their article on the collaboration, Police Professional commented that independent analysis, like that provided by Process Evolution, was important because: ‘it can help identify processes that could be streamlined and can isolate problems that are not apparent on a region-by-region basis, but which become clear in a multi-force approach.’

Background

Since 2002 when the Forensic Science Service (FSS) stopped being the only supplier of forensic services for police forces in the England Wales the number of private companies providing those services has increased significantly. The management of contracts with these companies is handled by two teams; the West Coast Consortium (WCC) management team and the Home Office Forensic Marketplace management team.

Accurate management information is critical to enabling these teams to fulfil their roles. Timely provision of forensic evidence can be vital to the success of police forces’ criminal investigations. Delivery of the contracts therefore needs to be monitored to ensure that contracted service levels are met. Understanding cost variances and ensuring services are priced correctly also helps ensure that police forces receive value for money at a time when they are under increasing financial pressures.

Recognising these needs, and aware of Process Evolution through their forensic process improvement work, the WCC first approached Process Evolution in 2008 to develop a prototype system for managing delivery of the initial contracts. In 2009 Process Evolution were then commissioned by the Home Office to provide a fully-fledged national management information solution to enable both teams to manage their contracts effectively and to allow the Home Office team to monitor the overall forensic marketplace

Solution

The solution, Forensic Management Information Tool (FMIT), is based on a relational database which enables it to capture and store the large volume of data required. This data includes a great deal of detail relating to each submission including the type of material submitted, the number of exhibits, the timing and type of services provided, the outcome of the analysis and the cost. As part of their contract, suppliers need to be able to provide the necessary data in a predefined format on a regular monthly basis.

F-MIT is web-based so that users in the management teams as well as suppliers can gain access to it without the need for specialist equipment. The majority of suppliers extract data from their internal management system and upload it directly to FMIT using a dedicated portal. This process includes stringent validation so that the data in the system is as accurate as possible.

Once the data has been entered into the system it is available for analysis and reporting by the management team users. The main feature of the system is the ability to run bespoke queries and present the results graphically in chart form. This includes the ability to filter the data based on parameters such as date range, lot, supplier, force and outcome. There are a series of options which enable users to select different ways of grouping and colour coding the results. In addition, the query results can be saved as image files or the data exported to Excel

Benefits

There are a number of benefits to using FMIT, particularly in relation to assisting with contract management and performance monitoring of the Suppliers as well as helping Forces better understand their supplier’s service provision. Key benefits include:

• Direct data capture from Suppliers (often automated) preventing the forces from having to do any data collection/collation themselves.
• Monthly data uploads to FMIT giving access to ‘live’ information on all previously delivered cases.
• The ability to drill down into data detail allowing analysis of turnaround times, correct contractual allocations, price variations, national spend, savings and market shares.
• From a national perspective, ability to build up a picture of good practice around the country and disseminate lessons learned.
• Web based application allowing FMIT access from any internet connection without any specialist software or hardware.
• Compliance with Information Assurance National Policing Accreditation protocols

John Armstrong (Head of the Home Office Forensic Marketplace Team), had this to say on the project:

“The development of FMIT has not been easy but now that we have a working system in place it is difficult to see how we ever managed before. It has quickly become a very useful system indeed and paying dividends in helping manage the national forensic marketplace. A close working partnership has developed with Process Evolution whom I have found to be very knowledgeable, proactive, extremely flexible in approach and a joy to work with”