Fortnightly update to the Police and Crime Commissioner - 24 November 2023

Dear Police and Crime Commissioner, Philip Wilkinson,

Since taking on the role of Chief Constable earlier this year, I have received lots of feedback from our communities and teams within the Force that they want to see much more emphasis on providing visible, neighbourhood-focused policing.

I would like to devote this letter today to describing some of the exciting changes we’re making in January 2024 that I believe will fundamentally improve the local policing service we are providing to our communities, achieve greater consistency in the way we deliver neighbourhood policing and create a stronger, more visible and more resilient local policing model.

Firstly, our ‘Target Operating Model’ review is looking at how we configure our frontline teams so can ensure we have the right resources, in the right place, at the right time, aligned to the demand for service we receive.

This has been a collective effort by a number of our teams and, over recent months, we have carried out extensive engagement with our Response Team Officers to agree a new shift pattern supported by a reduction in the number of hubs they start and end their shift from. This will provide much greater resilience in our resourcing levels and improve officer wellbeing, without compromising on response times or community visibility.

We’ve also looked at how we can make better use of our Control Room resources to reduce the level of demand placed on our Response Teams so that they can focus on responding to the public. Our Community Investigation teams are now managing more investigations, removing just under half the overall demand for investigations from Response teams. This work will make a huge difference and help improve our response service.

In line with the feedback I’ve received to strengthen our Neighbourhood Policing identity and approach, we are separating our Community Policing Teams into separate Response and Neighbourhood functions. Our Neighbourhood teams will continue to operate from their existing stations (which members of the public can see on our downloadable interactive map) and we are putting more resources into Neighbourhoods so that they can focus on being highly visible in our communities, working with them to address issues and concerns.

To ensure greater consistency in terms of the service our Neighbourhood Policing Teams (NPTs) provide to their communities, we are launching our Community Commitments in January. This will be a contract between us and the public, to outline what engagement our communities can expect from their Neighbourhood Policing Teams. It will enable our communities to hold our NPTs to account for the service they are receiving, and the delivery of them will be underpinned by a robust performance management process to ensure we are providing the most professional and consistent service all the time.

The funding you have provided to enable the purchase of two additional neighbourhood engagement vehicles will help us to double our existing fleet of these vehicles to 4, which is fantastic. This will, in turn, improve the visibility of our NPTs within our communities and provide more opportunities for our communities (particularly those in rural or isolated areas) to engage with us. We know that the use of our existing vehicles across the county has been hugely successful, and we look forward to building further on these positive opportunities. As from January, the public will be able to see where the vehicles will be by visiting the Your Area section of the Force website.

In January, we will also be raising awareness of all the ways the public can make contact with us, whether that be by accessing the vast range of services offered through our website, via our social media platforms, through our Community Messaging system, by going to the Your Area Neighbourhood Policing site, by visiting one of our front counters or, of course, by calling us on 101 in a non-emergency or 999 in an emergency.

I am looking forward to seeing these changes come to fruition, as I truly believe they will make a real difference to our communities. I will keep you updated as we move forward with these changes.

Kindest regards,

Catherine Roper

Chief Constable, Wiltshire Police