NORTHAMPTONSHIRE POLICE
Community Engagement Strategy 2016-2018
Owner: Superintendent Andy Cox
1.
Introduction
1.1
This document sets out the Northamptonshire Police strategy for community engagement.
1.2
The College of Policing defines Community Engagement as ‘the process of enabling citizens and
communities to participate in policing at their chosen level. This ranges from providing information
and assurance, to empowering them to identify and implement solutions to local problems and
influence strategic priorities and decisions.’
1.3
This definition clearly establishes a scale of different levels of engagement, from provision of
information through to active participation in policing and public safety, and allowing citizens to shift
from informing and consulting to collaborating and empowering (Figure 1).
Figure 1 Citizen involvement in Policing (based on Arnstein's Ladder of Participation)
1.4
Northamptonshire has a diverse population situated within both urban and rural settings.
Northamptonshire Police acknowledges that it cannot fully understand the communities in our county
in detail at all times: this strategy will increase that understanding in order to decide when and how to
engage effectively, reduce threat, risk and harm to members of the community, support the delivery
of an excellent policing service and involve citizens in policing.
1.5
Evidence indicates that effective community engagement includes potential benefits of
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an increase in public perceptions of safety
a tendency towards a reduction in disorder and anti-social behaviour
an increase in confidence and trust, and in community perceptions of the police
an improvement in police officers’ attitudes and job satisfaction.
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A better understanding of demand for service and,
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A better propensity to act to support policing activity
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1.6
All of these benefits can have a positive impact on the ability of the police to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour.1
This strategy sets the key priorities and objectives that the force will seek to deliver, and outlines the
governance structure that will be in place in order to support the strategy.
2.
Strategic Aims
2.1
The outcome of this strategy is that all members of the community:
a) know they can come to us,
b) know who to go to, and
c) know how to make contact
d) know what they contribute to public safety
e) know how to contribute to and support policing activity
Key to realising this will be for Northamptonshire Police to better understand the county’s
demographic profile in order to promote effective community engagement, especially areas of most
relevance to the Force’s strategic aim of protecting people from harm – by reducing violence and
protecting vulnerable people.
2.2
To achieve the vision the following actions have been set:
i. Develop a better understanding of the communities in Northamptonshire, their capacities and
vulnerabilities
ii. Increase the level of engagement between the community and the police, providing opportunities
to progress engagement from informing to collaboration in specified communities through
intensive engagement processes
iii. Meets the needs of individual communities and in doing so achieve improved confidence in the
police
iv. Act in consistent and transparent ways to improve confidence in local policing;
v. Achieve higher levels of information and intelligence from the community;
vi. Identify and understand emerging challenges, crime types and potential threat and harm;
vii. Maximise the contribution to the PREVENT agenda through improved community engagement
processes.
viii. Expanding and improving the use of key individual networks.
2.3
It is anticipated that delivery of the strategic aims will achieve:1. Improve information flows to and from Northamptonshire Police and the communities they serve.
2. Improve community trust and confidence in the police.
3.
3.1
Governance and openness
Governance of this strategy is to be transparent, open and public, and will be overseen by a strategic
board that will meet monthly. The board will be chaired by the strategic lead and attended by senior
managers from both Northamptonshire Police and key external stakeholders.
3.2
The strategic board will be supported by a delivery group chaired by the tactical lead. This group will
deliver the strategy and will oversee sub groups which will be established as necessary to deliver the
key principles at section 4 below. These sub groups will seek to have as wide a representation as
possible from the community.
1
College Of Policing – Authorised Professional Practice: Engagement and Communication, 2015 https://app.college.gsi.gov.uk/appcontent/engagement-and-communication/engaging-with-communities/#community-engagement
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4.
Key principles
4.1
These are described below, and deliver against the strategic aims set out at section 2 above.
(i) Identification of communities
‘Community’ is defined as ‘the people living in one particular area or people who are considered as a
unit because of their common interests, social group, or nationality.’2 Communities have traditionally
been categorised into their most obvious and visible groups, typically defined by location, identity or
organisational factors3.
This strategy will develop a more sophisticated approach to understanding the demographic profile of
the county and its community groupings. This entails:
• working in partnership with other agencies and community associations to seek to identify
communities within Northamptonshire;
• acknowledging that communities can be self-defined by members and that they may not be
represented by ‘agencies or community associations’;
• developing networks with identified communities - identifying ‘leaders’ that are true
representatives of the community and working alongside them and their fellow members,
supporting them in being representative;
 encouraging officers and staff to seek innovative means of engagement and interactions based
upon the experience of those communities.
(ii) Communications with identified communities
This strategy will specifically ensure that the ‘hard look’ is taken, that communities receive the ‘backing
to speak out against hatred and emerging crime types are identified and prioritised (for example FGM).
Northamptonshire Police will make it much easier for our communities to seek to engage with them.
Key to this will be a communications strategy that:
 works with communities to understand how they wish to communicate with the police. This
involves (but is not confined to) the principles and processes governing first contact with the
police and the use of the 101 telephone service and its associated service provision;
 develops a means for communities to seek to engage with us, when they want to, rather than
being traditionally police led.
 ensures that our website, phone lines and social media are effective at initial engagement. This
includes producing website and social media accounts in other languages.
 understands particular communities’ resources, capabilities, needs and vulnerabilities – for
example, how to ensure members of an identified community group know their rights or ensure
that communities are built into decision-making processes
 explores alternative methods of engaging with those who cannot or do not attend meetings, or
are otherwise ‘hard to reach’. (E.g. filming and online posting of community engagement events.)
(iii) Intensive engagement
Our priority is to protect people from harm by reducing violence and protecting the vulnerable; if a
neighbourhood is experiencing disproportionate amounts of such circumstances then intensive
engagement techniques will be utilised to investigate the causes of the problems, identify the
resources and right people to tackle those causes and to develop a structured approach to developing
solutions particular to those localities or communities.
2
Cambridge English Dictionary – Cambridge Dictionaries Online; Cambridge University Press 2015
For clarity ‘community’ refers to two situations: geographical units (this text uses ‘neighbourhoods’) and less tangible connections
between people across wider areas - like community groups or by social media often referred to as communities of interest (for example,
scouting) or experience (for example, LGBTQ)
3
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(iv) Emerging issues and crime types
Effective assessment and integration of the Force intelligence and community engagement processes
will promptly identify emerging crime types and issues; essential to protecting vulnerable people from
harm.
Knowledge by the community of how and whom to contact in the police, and an appreciation of the
value of this contact, will be significant in police effectiveness in tackling emerging issues, crime types
and community tension. This approach links directly to the strategy (see section 2.1) and the
objectives (see section 2.2 v).
5.
Interdependencies
5.1
Interdependencies include:
i. Equality Diversity Human Rights (EDHR Board)
ii. Service Delivery Model
iii. Agile working programme
iv. Estates programme
v. Interoperability programme
vi. Youth Engagement Plan
vii. Prevent Strategy
viii. Hate Crime
ix. Stop and Search
x. Rural Action Plan
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