Performance and Measurement

Summary

The North Wales Police area is mostly rural, with a number of popular coastal resorts attracting a large number of tourists and Holyhead, which has major ferry port connections.

The force was graded as “meeting the standard” by HMIC for the managing major crime, neighbourhood policing and citizen focus inspections. The force continues to perform strongly in managing major crime and neighbourhood policing and is making progress in embedding citizen focus policing.

The force and its three Basic Command Units continue to perform strongly in reducing volume crime and delivering sanction detections. All categories of crime showed a reduction of over 14% and the sanction detection rate is 40.3%. The force is working to improve confidence and satisfaction data including performance with regard to customer satisfaction with overall service, which is below that of peers. The force is participating in the current tranche of the Home Office / KPMG Quest programme.

There are six local priority indicators. One relates to crimes where children and young people are victims, in which the force has made significant improvements, exceeding its locally set stretch target. The other five relate to road safety; one measure has been discontinued and the force has failed to meet its minimum target for the other four.

The force has established and embedded Neighbourhood Policing in all its communities. There is now a clear drive for all staff including Neighbourhood Policing teams, to influence quality of life issues. To this end, the force is embarking upon the Quest programme to help ensure trust and confidence remains at the forefront of service delivery. The Dyna Ddigon (That’s Enough) force-wide strategy aimed at reducing the harm caused to communities by anti social behaviour has been complemented by the Dyna Dda (That’s Good) award for a member of the Neighbourhood Policing Team who has made a significant contribution towards satisfaction and confidence within their area. The nominations are made directly from members of the public. In addition, the work conducted on matching resources to demand has been highly acclaimed and highlighted as best practice by the Home Office. It has enabled the force not only to increase the number of incidents attended, but also the timeliness to those incidents with over 93% of all immediate incidents being attended to within the target of 19 minutes.

As a small force, North Wales faces challenges in maintaining capacity and capability to deliver a wide range of protective services, and has a number of collaborative arrangements in place to work with other forces both in Wales and North West England. The force also faces challenges in embedding citizen focus policing, increasing victim satisfaction and improving the level of people’s confidence in the force. There is also a need to reduce the satisfaction gap between black and minority ethnic, and white victims of crime.