“Gold Star Service On A Beige Budget”

Overreliance on data to determine how police forces are performing will leave officers having to “tick boxes” rather than tackle serious issues, Hampshire Police Federation has warned.

The Government announced a new Police Performance Unit to track national figures during a conference earlier this month.

However, it attracted criticism from sceptics who believed it could cause perverse behaviour by police looking to hit performance targets.

Outgoing Federation Chair Zoe Wakefield said “silly targets” would take officers away “from the core policing they should be doing”.

She said: “We’ve had it before in this organisation where officers were told they had to get so many outcomes every day.

“So, officers in Portsmouth were leaving the city centre and going up to Portsdown Hill where a lot of people go to smoke a bit of cannabis.

“They were getting cannabis detections, which is taking them out of the city where the majority of the crime is – where all the people are, where they need to be – just to get tick boxes.

“If that’s what the Government want officers to do, that’s what they’ll do – but it’s going to have an impact.”

Zoe agreed having systems in place to measure performance was important, but she warned against fostering a system that encouraged quality over quantity.

The Chair also said it was crucial to recognise the impact increased pressure the targets would create for all ranks.

She continued: “They’ll put the pressures down on the inspectors, the inspectors will put the pressure on sergeants and sergeants will put the pressure on the PCs – and that’s what will cause those perverse behaviours.

“Performance should be kept at senior management level because if you’ve got good sergeants, good line managers… then the performance will come naturally.”

Zoe added many forces were trying to deliver a “gold star service on a beige budget”.

She said: “We don’t have a lot of officers, particularly the frontline officers, sat on their backsides doing nothing.

“The majority of officers are doing the best job they can in the current circumstances, with the resources they’ve got and with the people they’ve got.”