North Yorkshire Police slammed by inspectors and 'must make urgent improvements to keep people safe'

A report that graded North Yorkshire Police across eight areas has been published today by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) following an inspection in October last year.

It said the service has deteriorated with one area rated as “inadequate”, four as “requires improvement”, two as “adequate” and just one as “good” in its first effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy (PEEL) inspection since 2018.

Inspectors said the areas requiring improvement included responding to the public, investigating crime, protecting vulnerable people, and building and developing its workforce. The inadequate area was its use of resources.

Roy Wilsher, His Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary, said: “I have concerns about the performance of North Yorkshire Police in keeping people safe and reducing crime. In particular, I have serious concerns about its strategic planning and organisational management.

“Senior leaders in the force need to ensure they have effective oversight of its enabling services, such as IT and HR functions. Failures in these areas impact the service the force provides.”

They said the force needs to improve the speed with which it answers and responds to emergency calls, as it is currently “well below the national standard” with only 41.9 per cent of 999 calls being answered within 10 seconds.

Lisa Winward, North Yorkshire Police’s chief constable, said: “The report highlights a number of areas that the force delivers well but also reports on a significant number of areas that require improvement.

“A number of these relate to the corporate capacity and capability of the organisation linked to workforce planning, governance, performance management, financial planning, and the overall efficiency and effectiveness of our shared enabling services.

“They told us that while the right actions might be taking place on the ground by our people, they were not able to find sufficient evidence of how this was directed and overseen through our governance structure.”

The chief constable said that since receiving the findings the force has been working “at pace” to address the issues raised.

She added: “The Inspectors told us that every single person they spoke to was committed, fully engaged in their work and doing a really good job in difficult circumstances.”

Services are being invested in, which include:

• £1.85m for the Force Control Room to reduce call answer times
• Improving the average response time for immediate attendance at urban and rural incidents by 2.5 minutes
• 21 new jobs with the safeguarding team
• 63 new police vans
• £400,000 to reduce digital forensics backlog, speeding up the turnaround of mobile devices
• Diversity and inclusion training and new leader and manager programmes

Inspectors said that North Yorkshire Police does work well with partner organisations to safeguard vulnerable people and found good examples of working with other services to divert young people away from offending and to reduce the vulnerability of people who may become victims of crime.

Mr Wilsher said he remains in regular contact with the chief constable and will monitor the police’s progress towards addressing the issues.