Public accountability meeting – 21&22 July 2022 - York & North Yorkshire Office for Policing, Fire, Crime and Commissioning

Meeting overview

The focus of this month’s meetings

Thursday 21 July 2:30-4:00pm – North Yorkshire Police

Nation Child Protection Inspection – Follow Up & Safeguarding Learning – To provide an update on how the police have reviewed, resourced and applied learning in response to the Nation Child Protection Inspection report recommendations. And to understand how that learning will be embedded into safeguarding and partnership working to provide a wider and appropriate delivery of support and service for children at risk.

Friday 22 July 2:00pm – 3:30pm – North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service

Safeguarding and vulnerability- assurance of effective safeguarding policies, robust partnership arrangements and frontline training to ensure good understanding of safeguarding responsibilities.

Ask your question on this month’s hot topics

The full procedure for asking questions at this meeting is available here: Procedure for public questions

To ask a question in advance
Send your question to [email protected] before the day of the meeting. Please include your name and address with your question.
To ask a question during the meeting using Twitter
To ask a question during the live broadcast, post your question on Twitter using #NYscrutiny
Not all questions may be able to be used, but they will inform the Commissioner’s questioning and the general discussion.

2:30 – 4:00pm – North Yorkshire Police –NCPI Follow Up & Safeguarding Learning

To provide an update on how the police have reviewed, resourced and applied learning in response to the Nation Child Protection Inspection report recommendations. And to understand how that learning will be embedded into safeguarding and partnership working to provide a wider and appropriate delivery of support and service for children at risk.

Attendees

Zoë Metcalfe – Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner
Lisa Winward – Chief Constable, North Yorkshire Police
Caroline Blackburn – Interim Assistant Chief Executive, Office of the PFCC
Tom Thorp – Interim Assistant Chief Executive, Office of the PFCC
Jenni Newberry – Head of Commissioning & Partnerships, Office of the PFCC
Lindsey Butterfield – Assistant Chief Constable, North Yorkshire Police
Fiona Wynne – Detective Superintendent, Head of Safeguarding, North Yorkshire Police

Police

Thematic presentation:

Lindsey Butterfield – Assistant Chief Constable, North Yorkshire Police

Performance update:

Lindsey Butterfield – Assistant Chief Constable, North Yorkshire Police

Agenda

	Time	Item	Lead
1	14:30	Attendance and introductions	Chair
2	14:32	Minutes of previous meeting and Actions	All
3	14:35	Public questions	Chair
4	14:40	Presentation	Police
5	15:20	Performance update	Police
6	15:50	Public questions	Chair
7	15:55	Any other business	All
8	16:00	Meeting ends

Meeting papers

Public questions

Tim – Harrogate – Safeguarding
- The HMIC found that North Yorkshire Police had failed many young people in North Yorkshire. What work has been done on the cases highlighted by the HMIC to understand the full extent of that failing, particularly the physical or emotional damage, or death incurred to those young people as a result of the failings ?
- Although I can appreciate that many/ all officers have training around vulnerable child cases, it is more suited to, and handled better by some officers with a disposition to those cases. Given the focus on violence towards women and girls, and this inspection, is it now the time to have a specialist unit in each main area of the county ? or to have the return of the PVPU.
- How much of a problem is silo-working between agencies such as NYP, social services, Cafcass and family courts. Are there gaps to fall through?

Jackie Gray, Councillor for Brompton by Sawdon Parish – 101
Can the commissioner please tell us when contacting 101 will be a simple call without the very long wait for someone to answer?
Can she also tell us why we are not able to leave a message if the line is busy?
The same problems are found with the 111 service. Neither are really services the public have trust in.

Jon – Barlby – 101
Is there any wonder NYP have performed so poorly in the recently published national statistics on time taken to answer 999 calls when the recruitment attracts applicants seeing the role as a (sometimes very brief) stopgap to becoming a PCSO/Police Officer. Humberside Police have a caveat that those recruited into their Control Room roles are unable to apply for internal vacancies for 4 years now, recently increased from 2 years. Have NYP considered this ‘front end’ adjustment to ease the situation?
This is resulting in a very high turnover of staff, a dwindling of experienced staff and despite the best efforts and good will of those who have been in the role for some time there is nothing in the way of recognition for this, little to no chance of advancement and ever increasing demand. Highly skilled emergency calltakers also being expected to perform time consuming (yet necessary) admin roles generated by the explosion of online reporting given the understaffing of the phone lines. Surely a dedicated ‘digital team’ to deal with these enquiries who are not ‘public facing’ could be set up to free up the calltakers who in the main are in the job to help people in their hour of need on the phone using their communication skills and not copy information from an online form onto the system?

Jayne – Bentham
Section 7 of the HMICFRS report says: “The force allocates some investigations to officers without the right skills and experience”
What developments have been made to put this right?
Will you be apologising to victims for not using officers without the right skills and experience?

Jayne – Bentham
“why you are not personally apologising 2 victims of #CSA who you knowingly failed using unqualified, untrained officers”
“I want assurance that the victims will receive a personal apology and no other victim has to go through the living hell of what I know some endured.”

Please help to shape the future of reporting crime.

Share your experiences of using 999 and 101 at: https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/CrimeReporting-National-Public-Contact-Survey-APCC/

Watch live

YouTube: https://youtu.be/2a_Uf72g-FU
Commissioner’s website: https://bit.ly/PAMJuly2022