Agenda item

Members to receive a report providing an update on force recruitment and retention of police and staff.

The Police and Crime Panel considered a report providing an update on the forces recruitment processes and the ability to retain officers.

The Police and Crime Commissioner introduced the report advising the steps he’d taken to gain further information and data from the force to better understand the processes and issues around recruitment and retention of officers and also to understand the present policy towards recruitment and to know more about recruits and promotion processes including what was being done to achieve specific targets, value for money as well as ensuring that force policy was in line with the aims of the Police and Crime Plan.

The Panel were advised there had been considerable effort between the OPCC and force to gather all the data and there was still some work to do around leavers exit information gathering.

The PCC also informed that matters were progressing in the right direction with a police force more broadly based across the various communities and more capacity for training officers in the different things they needed to know.

It was noted that the force had by volume recruited proportionately the highest number of officers of any force in the country during the national uplift programme whilst also increasing the diversity profile in each monitored protected characteristic.

During discussion of the report the Panel noted the comments around retention of officers and were concerned at the prevalence of officers (58%) leaving within the first 2 years of service. Panel members recognised the role was demanding and queried whether this data highlighted an issue of how to give support to police officers who may have gone through certain experiences.

It was also suggested that recruitment should be more robust to ensure all candidates were fully aware and prepared for what the role entailed. The Panel were interested to know more about the reasons why people were leaving especially in the first two years and sought more detail of why they transferred to other forces too i.e., promotion, better rates of pay etc.

Responding to the comments about providing support, it was stated that Leicestershire force provided support with various options available such as peer support, HR and various other staff. Overall, it was understood the support was good and this was reflected in the low levels of officers going off with stress compared to other forces.

As far as the difficulties in obtaining data from the force it was clarified that this was not because of the force being obstructive and was more about the availability of data as some had not been held previously and steps were being taken to now capture that such as keeping socio economic indicators for new recruits.

In terms of data around leavers, it was confirmed that exit interviews were carried out both in the force and at the OPCC, however those were voluntary and leavers could not be compelled to do those, so the data was still patchy. The PCC did feel that there was more that could be done to encourage people to give feedback rather than them just be sent an email questionnaire.

The Panel were concerned that the loss of experienced officers left a significant gap in terms of knowledge and skills lost. Panel members recalled a previous discussion with the former Chief Constable that suggested as many as 50% of the force were due to retire over the next 4 years and there was further concern about how that loss of experience was being compensated.

It was acknowledged that experienced officers leaving was an issue and Leicestershire were moving towards having what was termed a very young force. The Leicestershire Academy was providing impressive training and working hard to cross the skills gap.

The panel were interested in the various demographics of the Leicestershire force and whether there were figures from the covid lockdowns to present time showing how many officers had been recruited from a BAME background or who had English as a second language. There was also interest people from other backgrounds being promoted and how they were representative of the overall population across the Leicestershire force. The PCC advised that a lot of detail was collected upon recruitment but understanding all aspects of the force demographics was more difficult at this time due to availability of data. In terms of promotions, the force had undertaken a series of promotions increasing the number of inspectors and other senior officers, whilst those figures were not immediately to hand they could be gathered for a future report on promotions.

Panel members welcomed the online force recruitment site and steps taken to engage and recruit from different communities and enquired whether recruitment exercises were now all done online and if so, how that compared to face to face recruitment campaigns and any barriers to that. The PCC advised that recruitment stands were often held at events and using role models was particularly important in engaging different sections of the community and both were often more effective than anything online.

The Chair thanked the Police and Crime Commissioner for the update and asked that a further report providing details around force demographic - BAME, ESOL recruit numbers and promotion numbers; exploring the reasons for officers leaving in the first 2 years of service and the challenges of addressing gaps in experience, together with an insight into the work of Leicestershire Academy be brought to a future meeting.

RESOLVED:

1.    That the contents of the report be noted,

2.      That the Police and Crime Commissioner shall submit a further report providing details including force demographic - BAME, ESOL recruit numbers and promotion numbers; exploring the reasons for officers leaving in the first 2 years of service and the challenges of addressing gaps in experience, together with an insight into the work of Leicestershire Academy to a future meeting.