Equality standard for the police service

The equality standard for the police service (ESPS) was launched nationally on the 2^nd December 2009. This force was a field trial force for the standard and our Head of Equality and Diversity is a member of the Key National Working Group which has developed the ESPS with the National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA). The Equality Standard Framework and an accompanying overview is available from the NPIA at: http://www.npia.police.uk/en/11975.htm

Our Equality and Diversity Department has spent a lot of time examining how best to integrate the Equality Standard into the mainstream performance management and business planning processes for Devon and Cornwall Police. The Field trial that took place in Plymouth in 2009 was a great help in allowing us to better understand how the equality standard can improve upon our current method of monitoring performance through the organisational learning database.

The field trial report can be found here.

The internal Equality and Diversity group and our Strategic Independent Advisory group have agreed to progress the incorporation of the Equality Standard as set out in this paper the Briefing Equality Standard.

Progress update on the Equality Standard September 2010

The progress of the project to introduce the Equality Standard to Devon and Cornwall Police is moving forward as planned. The Equality and Diversity Dept has carried out a series of deep dive sessions with every SMT throughout the year and each BCU and department has been collating evidence against the 22 units of the Equality Standard. The deadline for the submission of evidence was the 1st of September and since then the E and D team have read and reviewed every submission and graded it against the national requirements. The Dept has been able to make an initial self assessment for the whole force and find that of the 22 units

• 3 units were assessed as below Baseline
• 15 were units at Baseline
• 4 were units at Integrating
• 0 were units at Excelling

This is a good set of results for the first time we have ever assessed ourselves in this way and there are clear areas for improvement which the force can work on.

On the 20th of September we circulated the findings of the assessment to all our independent advisory group members. There will be a conference on the 30th of September at the Futures Inn in Plymouth for all IAG members and SMT representatives to address the following questions

• Do you think the evidence backs up our self assessment, if not what would you change and why? What would you suggest as the priority in which the gaps we have identified should be dealt with in the next round of business plans?
• What do you think about the process we have used to introduce the standard and are there any improvements to make for next year?

We will use the information we gain from the IAG conference to help each SMT in their planning process for 2011/2012 to address the gaps that they consider to be the highest priority. It is intended that the annual assessment process be repeated in September each year with IAG input so that we can publish an annual update of our continuous improvement against the national Equality Standard for the Police Service.

We are providing all IAG members with the following documents to help us in checking our self assessment grade against the Equality Standard and they will also be interesting to SMT members and senior leaders for reference.

• A document entitled “Force Scoring Matrix” that contains some of the best evidence we have collected from all over the force in each of the 22 Units of the Equality Standard. This document also contains the self assessment of our grade for each Unit which can be Baseline, Integrating or Excelling. Indeed there are some Units that we have graded as below Baseline due to lack of evidence. The document also shows a High, Medium and Low indicator for each of the assessed grades so that we know whether, for example we are just achieving Baseline in a given unit or whether we are nearly at Integrating.
• The document entitled “Unit Scores by SMT” sets out the self assessment by every Senior Management Team against each of the 22 units of the Equality Standard in an “Easy Reference” chart format.
• A covering report for IAG members explaining in more detail the process that we have gone through to get to this point.
• The full list of all the evidence we collected is available against all 22 units of the Equality Standard
  
  • In order to assist the IAG members in starting to think about the evidence, we make the following observations about the work that has been done to date;
    • Unit 1
    • Unit 2
    • Unit 3
    • Unit 4
    • Unit 5
    • Unit 6
    • Unit 7
    • Unit 8
    • Unit 9
    • Unit 10
    • Unit 11
    • Unit 12
    • Unit 13
    • Unit 14
    • Unit 15
    • Unit 16
    • Unit 17
    • Unit 18
    • Unit 19
    • Unit 20
    • Unit 21
    • Unit 22
• The evidence consists, in the main, of lists of activities or actions although some of the better replies include links to relevant documents or websites. In future we would like to see this use of links to the source documents increased so that access to the documents is made available to anyone who wishes to “check” the evidence. On this first occasion though we will have to accept the evidence as submitted Where individual departments have scored below Baseline this does not always indicate that no evidence was provided, merely that where evidence was provided it fell below the Baseline standard. The use of acronyms and abbreviations is widespread and we have tried to eliminate it as best we can. However in future it will be made clear to the departments submitting evidence that the document will be made public and they should explain each abbreviation in full
• Unit 19 was very difficult to evidence as the baseline wording is “The organisation is able to identify all activities delivering positive equality outcomes and tackling disproportionality and discrimination”. Clearly use of the word “all” makes it almost impossible to grade as it is a very high standard. Brendan Brookshaw is a member of the National Editorial Board for the Equality Standard and will bring this to the notice of the National Police Improvement Agency at the next meeting
• The Deep Dive sessions that were run with leadership teams proved very successful in gathering a lot of evidence in a single day-long session. The E and D Dept ran additional sessions after the submission deadline of the 1st September to assist some teams to provide better quality evidence. We will consider the use of this method again next year as it was popular with the management teams
• The NPIA do not anticipate high scores for the first year of this process and the final self assessment for the force is higher than anticipated by the E and D Department, although it is a fair representation of the evidence that was submitted
• It is clear that some departments will need more assistance next year in fully understanding and evidencing the Standard. There were some good quality returns from Criminal Justice Department, the three Basic Command Units, the Operations Department, the Deputy Chief Constable’s Portfolio and the HR Directorate