Performance and Measurement

Summary

North Yorkshire Police covers England’s largest county, North Yorkshire, and the unitary authority of York, with a total resident population of 770,000 and an area of over 7,700 square kilometres. Three basic command units focus on front-line service delivery through Safer Neighbourhood teams.

During 2006/07, the force has seen significant changes in leadership. A new Chief Constable and a new Deputy were both appointed in April 2007. The Chief Constable retired in May 2007 and the Deputy Chief Constable took up his post as Chief Constable of Norfolk Constabulary on 29 December 2006 (* please see below). Although this had an impact on the senior management of the force, performance has been maintained.

The force continues to develop the Neighbourhood Policing model and adapt it to both the rural and urban communities within the county. Multi-agency neighbourhood management structures are becoming established and engage fully with local communities to deliver long-term solutions to local priorities. In some key areas of the Protecting Vulnerable People framework, units dealing with family protection and public protection have received further investment in order to provide a more effective service to victims and to enhance delivery to the public. Community Protection Units handle domestic violence, vulnerable people and missing persons, and have improved investigation capability.

The force has embedded effective processes to improve sanction detection rates, with the result that the current rate is a substantial improvement on last year’s performance. Rates for both offences brought to justice and sanction detections have risen and volume crime reduction has improved, with both violent crime and acquisitive crime levels falling.

The force did not receive any Poor or Fair/Deteriorated grades in the 2006 baseline assessment.

The force continues to collaborate with neighbouring forces in strategic cross-border initiatives to identify areas for collaboration. During 2006, it successfully used mutual aid to deal with a significant threat to disrupt electricity supplies by over 2,000 protesters at Drax, Eggborough and Ferrybridge coal-powered electricity generating stations. Other agencies and a further 17 police forces were involved.

In order to identify threats and assess risk and capability, the force has developed a microanalysis methodology to analyse serious, organised and cross-border crime threats, assets and gaps. The use of this has been extended to other forces, with HMIC identifying it as good practice.

The strategic plan for 2007–10 has five key objectives: to increase customer satisfaction; to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour; to bring offenders to justice; to reduce the fear of crime and anti-social behaviour; and to reduce serious and fatal road traffic collisions.

(* The printed publication incorrectly stated that the former Chief Constable left in 2006.)