HMICFRS inspection on serious and organised crime

In July last year we were inspected by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary & Fire and Rescue Service (HMICFRS) on how we deal with serious and organised crime (SOC).

It focused on our understanding of SOC and setting priorities to tackle it, our resources and skills, and how we tackle SOC and safeguarding people and communities.

While there were some extremely positive findings, our overall rating is requires improvement.

There are no surprises in areas we need to work on and much of this was well underway by the time of the inspection, and we’ve made significant progress since. However, there are some longer term and more difficult challenges where we continue to adapt, change and resource.

Our understanding of SOC and priority setting feedback was positive, highlighting the effectiveness of our risk assessment process to identify and prioritise threat.

Our investment in the capacity and capability of our harm reduction hubs and violence reduction teams were recognised in combatting the criminal exploitation of children and vulnerable adults by organised crime groups.

Our prevention initiatives to address and disrupt pathways into SOC and focus on vulnerable groups and individuals were noted, as well as how alive we are to the importance of lifetime offender management. Our work on our Making Great Places initiative is an example of this.

The key areas we are focused on since the initial feedback from HMICFRS are:

• Neighbourhood policing teams (NPTs) lead the local response to tackling SOC threats. The Inspectorate found that they lacked proactive resources. We now have a dedicated specialist resource aligned to SOC work. In 2023 proactive teams made over 250 arrests, recovered six firearms, closed 19 county lines and secured prison sentences totalling over 110 years

• Inconsistences in the preparation and ongoing monitoring of our policing plans and information sharing with partners. We have made improvements to our plans and are recording them on police systems. There is also a new process working with partners to better share information and collectively respond to actions

• Intelligence is not always being developed quickly enough to support investigations and proactive disruption activity. We have significant investment within our intelligence teams for SOC work including our SOC and exploitation team (SOCEX) who focus on specific threats

Assistant Chief Constable Becky Riggs, said: “The inspection has identified we have some clear gaps around our ability to effectively tackle SOC, but it also recognises we understand this and have plans in place and underway to address some of these issues.

“They also acknowledged our clear aspiration to improve our work in this area through a measured approach and that we know our operating model needs to be a sustainable one. We are working on this, some remedial work has been done since the inspection and plans for the longer term work is ongoing. We are committed to reducing the harm caused by serious and organised crime and protecting those vulnerable to this threat.”