Police on the streets 80% of the time?
“Police have got to spend 80 per cent of their time now on the streets”.
Gordon Brown, Leaders’ debate, 15 April 2010
Cathy Newman checks it out
“More bobbies on the beat” has been the perennial politicians’ battle cry. So it wasn’t a surprise to hear this claim leaving Gordon Brown’s lips last night. But in the last few weeks, both Labour and the Conservatives have got into trouble for their use of Home Office facts and figures. Is this one fair cop or not?
The analysis
Just last month, the Advertising Standards Agency banned a Home Office campaign, stating that police can now be expected to spend 80 per cent of their time on the beat, broke the rules on being “legal, decent, honest and truthful” as it did not make clear that “on the beat” included duties other than foot patrols.
The ASA also pointed out that the pledge did not apply to all 140,000 police officers in England and Wales – only to 13,500 neighbourhoold constables and 16,000 community support officers.
Brown didn’t make either of those things clear last night either. The PM’s claim forms the basis of the local policing target in England. So, regardless of whether Brown misled last night, is the target being met?
Well, according to a report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), the local policing target, which was signed off by police chiefs in 2008, isn’t.
Ironically the HMIC even found that: “Forces generally require officers to record periods when they are not on their patch. However, we found confusion on what kind of absence had to be logged… Some team supervisors had little idea of whether their teams were meeting the requirement or not.”
It also found: “To achieve 80 per cent visibility, forces concentrate on measuring abstraction. However, this places the focus on managing internal resources, rather than on providing for public needs. Keeping teams stable and up to-strength is vital.”
Only 14 of the 43 forces in England were found to have a “good” rating over this target; again it should be noted this research relates to local policing teams, not all uniformed officers.
On the broader issue, Home Offices figures revealed in a parliamentary answer show time spent “on patrol” by police officers dropped to just 13.8 per cent, although this figure does not include when officers respond to an incident.
Labour told us tonight that “what the Prime Minister was referring to was that with Labour every community now has a neighbourhood police team committed to spending at least 80 per cent of their time on the beat or visibly working in their neighbourhood.”
They went on that “Gordon Brown was very clear about neighbourhood police teams in his speech on 1 March when he said: ’The recent report from the Chief Inspector of Constabulary found that, while most forces were working to achieve the 80 per cent commitment, some forces claimed “it would be too much bureaucracy” to measure it, and some supervisors “had little idea” of whether their teams were doing it. Let me be absolutely clear – that is not acceptable.’”
The verdict
When Brown says “on the streets”, that’s exactly what people will expect. Not only did he repeat the misleading claim banned by the ASA. But the 80 per cent target is at present nowhere near being met. So he gets a FactCheck caution.
There are 2 comments on this post
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having worked for 25 years with the police, be assured that less than 20% of their time is `out of the station` and then often visiting hotels etc, drinking `tea` (or what ever) also since 24 hr shopping, often to be found at am in Tesco etc. this is absolutely true!
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