College of Policing Needs To Be ‘More Relatable’

THE College of Policing needs to be more relatable to frontline officers, Hampshire Police Federation has said, after a major review flagged concerns from every level of policing over the College’s effectiveness.

The review found that officers thought it was too remote from policing and insufficiently useful to frontline officers, and the College admitted that “much needs to change”.

Hampshire Police Federation Chair Zoë Wakefield agreed. She said: “The College of Policing needs to be more relatable to frontline officers. I think it is seen as somewhere you go if you want to climb the ladder to become senior leaders within the organisation. It’s not seen as applicable if you are in the lower ranks.

“There are some key changes it could make. For example, there are so many complaints around the quality of the e-learning. That is something that it could do a complete overhaul of, and make it better.

“But it also needs to engage more with the frontline. In the 18 months that I’ve been Federation Chair, the College of Policing has never come to me and said, ‘We want to know what frontline officers in Hampshire think about x, y and z’. If they’re only going to senior officers in force, they may not be getting the true picture of what the issues are.”

Zoë added that she hoped the College’s new CEO, Andy Marsh, who was previously Chief Constable at Hampshire, would make the changes needed.

She said: “Andy Marsh is very well thought of, very well respected. As Chief Constable in our force, he understood what life was like for frontline officers, so I would like to think that he will be able to make the right changes, to make it more relatable.”