‘We need to roll up our sleeves and focus on cutting crime’: Chief of police standards says forces have ‘lost sight of the basics’ and need to ‘prevent crime and catch criminals’
- Andy Marsh is chief executive of College of Policing, which sets police standards
- He said the ‘performance is not good enough’ as 6% of burglaries led to a charge
- Met Police Commissioner Mark Rowley pledged arrest of 100s’ wanted criminals
Police have ‘at times, lost sight of the basics’ and need to ‘prevent crime and catch criminals’, the standards chief has warned.
Andy Marsh, chief executive of the College of Policing, which sets police standards and training, called on officers and staff to exercise the ‘highest professional standards’ in a speech on Wednesday.
He said at ‘the moment we are simply not effective enough’ after forces up and down the country have been criticised for low burglary charge rates, just 6%.
Mr Marsh said: ‘We need to roll up our sleeves and focus on cutting crime.’
His comments come as Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley – who replaced Cressida Dick – promised hundreds of wanted criminals including sex offenders, burglars and robbers would be arrested in the next 100 days as part of new measures to boost confidence in the force.
Andy Marsh, chief executive of the College of Policing, which sets police standards and training, called on officers and staff to exercise the ‘highest professional standards’ in a speech on Wednesday
His comments come as Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley (pictured, on right, with King Charles) promised hundreds of wanted criminals including sex offenders, burglars and robbers would be arrested in the next 100 days as part of new measures to boost confidence in the force
Sir Mark Rowley replaced Dame Cressida Dick, the previous Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police
The latest Home Office data, from July, shows that fewer than 10 per cent of burglaries lead to a charge (this data includes robberies, burglaries and thefts)
The new boss of Britain’s biggest police force also told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme burglary is ‘too serious an intrusion’ not to have an officer attend, branding it unacceptable that the proportion of reported burglaries attended by an officer from the Met has fallen to 50%.
During a lecture for the Police Foundation, Mr Marsh, a chief constable who used to lead both Hampshire and Avon and Somerset Police, said: ‘We have, at times, lost sight of the basics.
‘For me, getting the basics right means delivering what the public expect – the prevention and detection of crime by officers and staff exercising the highest professional standards.’
He also stressed how ‘getting the confidence of communities requires a concerted effort’, adding: ‘In my book, performance plus trust equals confidence.
‘It is not enough simply to show that we care about diverse communities if we are not dealing with the most basic requirements they have of us, namely to prevent and detect crime.
‘Engagement, in a policing model built on consent, is the route to effective performance and keeping people safe, and should not be a distraction from it.
‘At the moment we are simply not effective enough – performance is not good enough.’
Andy Marsh, chief executive of the College of Policing, is expected to say regarding police standards: ‘At the moment we are simply not effective enough’
This graph shows the steady rise in police-recorded crime from 2017 to March 2022
Mr Marsh used the talk to set out his plan for how the college will help forces provide a police service which ‘prevents crime and gets justice for more people’.
Referring to the increasingly low proportion of crimes resulting in a charge, Mr Marsh said: ‘The public just don’t think that is good enough. Neither should we.’
Just 5.6% of offences in England and Wales in 2021/22 – about one in 18 – resulted in a charge and/or summons, down from 7.1%, or one in 14, in 2020/21, according to Home Office figures published in July.
Mr Marsh said that ‘leadership is the single most important success factor of a high-performing police force’, adding: ‘No officer or member of staff can meet their potential, have their talent identified and managed, or be challenged when their performance falls short, without excellent leadership.’
This graph shows the length of time between a crime being recorded and a charge or other outcome from March 2016 to the last available data this year. It shows the number of crimes taking more than 100 days to reach a charging decision has risen significantly
According to an extract of his speech, he added: ‘When citizens find themselves having to do the job of the police – whether that is tracking down their own stolen tech using Find My Phone, only for the police to refuse to investigate, or when mothers patrol the streets because they are concerned about the safety of their children, their patience with us is going to be pretty thin.
‘It is the job of all in policing, not least of all in the college, to equip our officers with the skills and knowledge, that I have talked about, that they need to prevent crime and catch criminals.
‘The public, and politicians who represent them, have a right to expect the very highest levels of performance, with integrity, and are right to hold us to account for delivering it.
‘Policing spends billions of pounds of public money every year; we cannot baulk at scrutiny and oversight, which is a fundamentally important part of any recipe for success.’
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