The Police Reform Act 2002 outlines the role of the IPCC as guardian of the police complaints system. Our purpose is to increase public confidence in the police complaints system in England and Wales, and we do this by providing direct oversight of individual complaints and conduct issues through our investigations, appeal reviews, and other casework activities.
We also provide general oversight of the performance of the police complaints system as a whole. The key challenges for us are to develop priorities that make the biggest improvements, balance the need for central co-ordination of activities with local delivery, and engage appropriately with organisations with different needs. We carry out this role alongside key partners so that we are delivering improvements across the system and focusing on priority areas in order to maximise impact.
Our guardianship function has four strands:
Setting standards for the operation of the complaints system is a key responsibility for the IPCC.
Key work under this strand includes:
Ensuring the accessibility of the complaints system is a responsibility shared between the IPCC, police forces, and police authorities. We will work with police forces and others to implement our Access Strategy, which aims to ensure that the complaints system is accessible to all members of the public and that it considers the needs of young people, vulnerable adults, BME groups, and those with specific language or disability needs.
Click here to view the IPCC Access Strategy web page.
One of our most important functions involves promoting excellence in policing by drawing out and feeding back learning from our work. We will continue to publish regular Learning the Lessons bulletins to disseminate learning to the police service
Our Guardianship Strategy sets out how we will deliver and co-ordinate the four strands of our guardianship function. It was developed to help ensure that the guardianship activities we undertake across the Commission are well co-ordinated and focus on agreed strategic priorities. The strategy helps to ensure that all staff have a shared understanding of our approach to guardianship, and sets out how directorate, team, and individual roles contribute to the overall objectives.
An updated Strategy was agreed in June 2011, and is divided into three sections:
You can read the IPCC Guardianship Strategy document by clicking here. Strategic guardianship work Over the next year, as part of our guardianship function, we will work with stakeholders on our 6 priority areas and on a number of strategic guardianship projects that have been agreed by Commission and form part of our current corporate plan. Both the priority areas and guardianship projects will be reviewed and updated as part of our annual planning process. Project Description Delivery date Implementation of Access Strategy We will work with the police to ensure there is effective local access for complainants including a review of the information made available to complainants and the training provided for front desk staff December 2011 Implementation of Right First Time Campaign Using information from the performance framework and learning from appeals, we will design targeted interventions that help the police to improve local complaint handling by implementing the principles of our Statutory Guidance December 2011 Report into Deaths Following Police Contact We will publish a national report on deaths following police contact in 2010/11 March 2012 Community Engagement We will continue our programme of engagement with groups who represent communities who may come in to contact with the police, in order to promote the complaints system, learn from their experiences and improve public confidence March 2012 Programme of work to reform the Complaints System We will complete a programme of work to implement the reforms to the complaints system set out in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill. This will include: Revision of the Police Statutory Guidance, our Operations Manual and public information Developing our performance framework in order to maintain effective oversight of all complaints Developing the polices and processes required to discharge our new role in reviewing complains about Police and Crime Commissioners May 2012
Over the next year, as part of our guardianship function, we will work with stakeholders on our 6 priority areas and on a number of strategic guardianship projects that have been agreed by Commission and form part of our current corporate plan. Both the priority areas and guardianship projects will be reviewed and updated as part of our annual planning process.
We will complete a programme of work to implement the reforms to the complaints system set out in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill. This will include:
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