Report of the Police, Crime and Fire team, Greater Manchester Combined Authority

To provide Committee Members with a highlight report of crime and policing issues for discussion with the Mayor and Deputy Mayor.

The Committee considered the report of the Police, Crime and Fire team, Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) which was a highlight report of crime and policing issues for discussion with the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester.

Key points and themes in the report included:

• Lifting GMP out of special measures;
• Resources;
• Progress with IT systems;
• Reducing crime and anti-social behaviour in neighbourhoods;
• Operation Vulcan in Cheetham Hill and Strangeways;
• Roads policing and safe travel;
• Violence reduction and county lines; and
• Equality and diversity.

Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, outlined the journey of change that GMP had been through, leading to His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary (HMIC) taking GMP out of special measures recently, and the speed with which this improvement had been achieved.  He highlighted the progress made across a range of areas including handling of calls from the public, time taken to respond to incidents, the quality of the response and an increase in prosecutions.  He also highlighted that there had been an increased use of stop and search powers while also having a reduction in the number of complaints.  He reported that a significant amount of the frontline officer posts that had been lost due to austerity had been restored and highlighted further funding from the Home Office for police officer recruitment, advising that increasingly people wanted to join GMP.  He emphasised the importance of making roads policing a priority.  He highlighted Operation Vulcan, which had been launched the previous week, and Operation Avro, which he advised was visible, positive policing which made an impact in communities and increased their confidence in GMP; however, he recognised that still much more needed to be done and also that, while it was not the subject of today’s meeting, there were major learnings to be taken from the Manchester Arena Inquiry report.

Baroness Bev Hughes, Deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester outlined how GMP had been able to make the progress it had made so far and how it would continue to do so.  She informed Members that those involved in the recruitment of the new Chief Constable had been very clear about the criteria they were looking for, including a genuine commitment to a public service ethos, the ability to build leadership capability in GMP and transparency and willingness to work in partnership and she outlined how Chief Constable Stephen Watson met those requirements.

The Committee also received a presentation from Chief Superintendent Richard Timson of GMP.  The key points and themes in the presentation included:

• The journey to improvement;
• Restructures;
• The force-wide approach to reduce demand on public services;
• Police operations; and
• Public and Elected Member engagement.

Some of the key points that arose from the Committee’s discussions were: 

• Work to address violence against women and girls, including the impact so far and plans to continue this work;
• The confidence of communities in reporting crimes such as speeding and anti-social behaviour, including problems getting through on the 101 non-emergency number and residents who are not able to use online chat, and concern that under-reporting of crime in some areas would affect how police resources were deployed;
• What direct engagement would GMP be doing to restore public confidence in the police and how would this tie in with the Community Safety Strategy;
• Reducing serious youth violence;
• How many officers were needed to meet GMP’s aims;
• The important role of Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) and whether those who left were being replaced; and
• What more was needed from the national government to provide Manchester residents with more police and emergency services support.

The Deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester advised that violence against women and girls was a very important area of work.  She informed Members about the campaign to tackle attitudes towards sexual harassment, which had been started with the #IsThisOkay video.  She advised that this was a key campaign underlying the strategy, that it would continue, including a second video, and that they were bringing boys and men into the conversation about tackling this unacceptable behaviour when they witnessed it.  She informed Members about the Safer Streets programme, work with the Council on the Women’s Night-time Charter, the Good Night Out Guide and Operation Lioness and reported that there was a wide array of work taking place.  She informed Members that work was also taking place on Domestic Abuse, rape and serious sexual assault and reported that GMP would be one of 14 police forces taking part in Operation Soteria Bluestone, a scheme which aimed to transform the policing response to rape and serious sexual offences.

Chief Superintendent Richard Timson informed the Committee that there was a force-wide delivery plan for addressing violence against women and girls and scrutiny of that work.  He outlined some of the initiatives taking place, working with partners including the student community, including the Sexual Violence Action Network, the Ask Angela initiative and work to set up something similar to the third-party reporting centres which already existed for hate crimes, where students could report sexual violence.  The Chair emphasised the importance of supporting all young people, not just students.

The Mayor of Greater Manchester acknowledged the Member’s comments about public confidence in reporting crime and advised that there was still work to be done.  He reported that call answering on the 999 and 101 numbers had improved dramatically, with the precept having been used to recruit more call handlers, but he recognised that sometimes it could still take too long to speak to someone on the 101 non-emergency number.  He advised that live chat was a good option for those who were online and should be promoted more.  He informed Members about a new community messaging system which had first been introduced in Trafford and was now being introduced in Manchester and he offered to provide the Committee with further written information on this.  He advised that public confidence was based on the speed of call answering and the quality of that initial interaction and then the response that came from that.  He reported that GMP was already improving on these and that these improvements would continue.  

The Mayor of Greater Manchester stated that serious youth violence was a major concern.  He advised that this was a societal issue, not just a policing issue, and that, through the Violence Reduction Unit, a more sophisticated response was being developed.  He advised that many young people in the region were living in fear and that a lot of the young people who carried weapons did so because they were afraid, not because they were intending to commit acts of violence.  He informed Members about eight community-led pilot projects taking place across Greater Manchester, to address the issues.  He stated that he believed this was the right approach to addressing the problem and, with perseverance, would lead to results.  Chief Superintendent Richard Timson outlined some of the root causes of youth violence which needed to be addressed, working in partnership with local communities and organisations who worked in those communities. 

The Deputy Mayor reported that there was evidence from Manchester Metropolitan University that the work in communities in relation to youth violence did lead to a sustained reduction in offences.  In response to the question about community engagement activity to improve public confidence in GMP, she informed Members that GMP had undertaken a large consultation with local communities over the summer and that engagement work would continue.  She stated that she could not provide a figure for what she considered the ideal number of officers; however, at the end of the national officer uplift programme, GMP would have about 8,100 officers, which was significantly higher than the 6,000 it had dropped to during the austerity measures.  She highlighted that a large number of these would be recently recruited, inexperienced officers, so further work would be needed to develop their expertise.  She advised that the Chief Constable was undertaking a review to ascertain the correct numbers of PCSOs and police officers in each team, although she was not aware of any current decision not to replace PCSOs who left.

The Mayor of Greater Manchester advised that public confidence would be built over time due to local beat officers working in the same neighbourhoods and developing relationships and also by providing a good quality response and the publicising of that response.  He advised that Councillors had a key role to play in this.  In response to the question about what was needed from the national government, he said that long-term stability in terms of investment in policing was needed, with resources commensurate with the level of threat and harm in communities.  He advised that this also applied to council funding as cuts to local government also impacted on community safety.  He reported that the government and all political parties in Westminster needed to understand the current situation with local services and the pressures on local people and the risk that further austerity cuts would present.

Chief Superintendent Richard Timson reported that officer capacity and capability were both important and that GMP had lost a lot of that capability during the austerity period, as experienced officers left and were not replaced, and that GMP was working to build that capacity up again.  He added that there were a lot of experienced police officers due to retire in the next couple of years.  He advised that the cost-of-living crisis presented another challenge as it tended to lead to an increase in vulnerability and criminality.

The Chair thanked the guests for attending the meeting and invited them to attend a future meeting.  She asked Chief Superintendent Richard Timson to provide an update at a future meeting on the communications work, public confidence and how the journey to improvement was going and she thanked the guests, and everyone at GMP, for their work.  The Statutory Deputy Leader welcomed the opportunity to hear from the three guests at today’s meeting and the improvement journey that GMP was on.

Decisions

1.            To invite the guests to attend a future Committee meeting, including asking Chief Superintendent Richard Timson to provide an update on the communications work, public confidence and how the journey to improvement is going.

2.            That the Members’ questions which had not been raised during the meeting, due to time constraints, will be sent to the Mayor’s Office for a response.