Lincolnshire Police rated '˜good' across the board

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) has given Lincolnshire Police a '˜good' rating for effectiveness following a recent assessment - meaning that the force now has a '˜good' rating across board for efficiency, effectiveness and legitimacy.
Lincolnshire PoliceLincolnshire Police
Lincolnshire Police

Lincolnshire’s Assistant Chief Constable, Paul Gibson, said the latest report by HMIC on the performance of the force is good news for the people of Lincolnshire and the force, and a testament to the continuing dedication and application to task of every member of the organisation.

He said: “As a force we are proud to deliver services that have been independently assessed by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate as ‘Good’ across the board.

“This report follows the good news in the HMIC reports in November which again graded Lincolnshire as ‘good’ in the areas of efficiency and legitimacy. We now have an overall ‘Good’ grading for HMICs three pillars of inspection under PEEL – efficiency, effectiveness and legitimacy.”

The HMIC ‘Police Effectiveness 2016’ report, published today (March 2), says their overall judgement of Lincolnshire Police is ‘good’ and is an improvement on the 2015 report on the same categories which said the force ‘required improvement’.

Mr Gibson continued: “It is very satisfying to see our long-standing plans coming to fruition to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our services for the benefit of Lincolnshire.”

The report published today notes that ‘Lincolnshire is good at keeping people safe and reducing crime’, and states that in the five years from June 2011 crime reduced by 19.7 per cent in Lincolnshire compared with 0.5 per cent nationally.

In the last year, there was an increase of 1.3 per cent in Lincolnshire compared with a national increase of 7.8 per cent.

Mr Gibson said: “In this latest report, four out of five areas of inspection are graded as ‘good’.

It says we are ‘good’ at preventing crime, tackling anti-social behaviour, and keeping people safe. We are ‘Good’ at investigating crime and managing offenders, and we are ‘good’ at tackling serious and organised crime and there are good leadership arrangements to oversee the force’s preparedness to respond to all the threats identified in the strategic policing requirement.”

Mr Gibson said the one area HMIC found where the force still required improvement was in protecting vulnerable people and supporting victims, and the professional development of specialist staff.

He said: “I am confident of improvement in those areas since the inspection.

“The well publicised work we carried out last year to adjust our resources and divert more to emerging issues such as cyber-crime and online grooming and boost our investigative capabilities in the areas of child sexual exploitation, missing persons and domestic abuse are already addressing the areas mentioned by HMIC.

“We set up the new and specialist sections to address these specific areas of concern and as they establish themselves within the structure of the organisation and I believe their activities will also lead to improvements in the way we deal with child sexual exploitation and missing people.

“We have already eliminated the backlog of ‘Stop Abuse’ referrals (which relate to domestic abuse cases) mentioned in the report, and the professional development of our specialist staff is always a priority for us.”