Verbal update.
Minutes:
The Panel received a verbal update from Treena Fleming, the Borough Commander on the merging of Haringey and Enfield Borough Command Units (BCUs). The following key points were noted:
a. The Panel noted that the new Borough Commander had been in post since April and that, overall, the merger had gone well. It was reported that following an initial bedding in period, performance had stabilised and 80% of I grades were responded to within target times and 75% of S grades within the target time.
b. The Borough Commander advised that her focus was on ensuring a high quality of service and on what the officers did when they arrived at the scene of crime rather than solely on how quickly they got there.
c. Response teams were responsible for carrying out low-level investigations and there was a continuity of the investigating officer throughout the whole process. The Borough Commander advised that she was looking to upskill her officers to ensure that all of her officers were investigative.
d. The Borough Commander welcomed the fact that sexual offences and child abuse had been assigned back to front line policing and that with the safeguarding teams in place, this allowed the police to offer a much more holistic service, with one point of contact and the ability to offer wrap around services to victims of those crimes. There police had also developed a much more joined-up risk assessment process.
e. The Panel were advised that the CID team was in place and that it was their responsibility to handle complex crime.
f. The merging of neighbourhood teams was going well and there were only a couple of vacancies, including those in the schools team. The Panel noted that there was significant best practice learning taking place in the neighbourhoods model and that the shift pattern for officers in neighbourhoods teams had been changed to ensure deployment between 4pm and midnight, as well as at key hotspot locations, in response to increased levels of criminal activity during those times.
g. Overall, the Borough Commander advised, the merged BCU offered a great deal of autonomy and flexibility in dealing with crime across both boroughs.
The following was noted in response to the discussion of this item:
a. In response to a question around how many new police officers were scheduled to come to Haringey and Enfield, the Borough Commander advised that the government had announced around 1300 new officers for the Metropolitan and that she was currently seeing around 10-15 new recruits coming through a month, along with some direct entry detectives.
b. In response to a question around how well the relationship worked between the police and the Council, the Borough Commander advised that there were good relationships being developed with individual colleagues and that overall the relationship worked well. The Borough Commander advised that Sandeep was co-located with the Police and that she held regular meetings with the Chief Executive. Furthermore, her five Superintendents worked closely with the relevant directors within the Council. Overall, it was emphasised that the relationship between the Council and police colleagues was one of a critical friend.
c. In response to a question about the exact number of vacancies in the Neighbourhoods teams, the Borough Commander advised that under the Met’s Borough Workforce Targets, they were supposed to have 46 officers and they currently had 45, so there was only 1 vacancy. However, it was noted that of those 45 police officers some of them could be on sick leave at any one time or assigned to restricted duties if they had been injured.
d. In response to concerns raised about the effectiveness of ward panel meetings and the self-nominating process involved, the Borough Commander acknowledged that the panels were only as good as the people who were involved in them and suggested that they key aspect was to see what learning and areas of best practice could be gathered from the successful ward panels.
e. In response to a question around the spread of officers across the two Boroughs, the Borough Commander advised that she didn’t have the exact figures but set out that the performance figures suggested that it was an equitable service across both Boroughs and that the spread of resources should be broadly equal.
f. The Panel sought assurances around the abstraction of local SNT officers to cover large scale policing events such as recent Extinction Rebellion protests. In response, the Borough Commander that requests for central aid did happen and that to some extent this was out or her control, however where local officers were abstracted she would back fill those frontline positions and had recently implemented 12 hour shift patterns in order to help provide cover.
RESOLVED
That the update was noted.