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The Challenge
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”
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