Finance & Business Planning
ABC and the bigger picture
This page details the key ABC schemes in place and provides guidance from the Policing Performance Assessment Framework (PPAF) Programme Board.
In addition to developing PPAF as a new approach, ABC will improve upon and integrate with existing arrangements (Best Value, Interim Measures, National Policing Plan, Public Service Agreement Targets).
PPAF Background
The Home Office, ACPO, APA and other stakeholders are working to develop a new Policing Performance Assessment Framework (PPAF).
PPAF is intended as an effective, fair framework for comparing performance in policing, in a way that provides a firm basis for effective performance management at Force, Authority and Central Government level.
The development of PPAF reflects a desire to focus on the key strategic outcomes at the heart of policing to improve the quality of performance measures and the data used to evaluate performance against them.
A key principle driving this work is improving upon, not settling for, what is already in place.
Work on PPAF to date has developed four outcome domains:
- Reducing Crime
- Investigating Crime
- Promoting Public Safety
- Providing Assistance
These must occur alongside the overarching Citizen Focus domain and contextual Resource Usage domain.
The next stage is to build on this and define key performance measures for use in these domains, testing them against the PPAF acceptance criteria (designed to ensure PPAF is based on quality measures) and implementing them from April 2004.
PPAF Domain Structure
Please see Diagram of PPAF Domain Structure. (Domains 1-4 are those for which ABC seeks to provide quantifiable data about the costs of policing an area.)
As a key component of the Policing Performance Assessment Framework (PPAF), ABC enables accurate comparison between forces and is therefore a key part of the process of identifying good practice and giving weaker forces central assistance.
1) The Police ABC model costs activities and allocates them to these four domains.
2) The costs reflected can then be used as the basis for reporting expenditure.
3) ABC data is then used to examine resource allocation in Domain B – Resource Usage.
PPAF Programme and Project Boards
The work is being taken forward by a number of discrete project boards, overseen by the Programme Board, as depicted below:
The following key relationships exist within the overall PPAF programme:
- Overall PPAF Programme Board
- Central PPAF Programme Team
- ABC Project Board
- Other PPAF Project Boards
