8 hours Ago
Do you ever feel that some people are just busy being busy? Their diaries are full, they rush around, they fret and stress but at the end of the day, it’s impossible to see what they have actually achieved. Last week, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) – the policy body that represents local Police and Crime Commissioners – published a report, “Towards better local partnerships systems in England and Wales” which called out the "cluttered and complex partnership landscapes" to which they are required or expected to contribute. They said: "One police force area provided a map listing over 80 partnerships.
Another had identified more than 300 meetings annually which they were invited to attend. Local geographies have a significant impact on this, with some police force areas covering multiple local authority footprints." Sussex is one of those.
They highlighted one contributor who commented: "I spend a lot of my time sitting in different rooms with the same people, talking about the same things, but with a different heading on the agendas and papers in front of us." More than 80 per cent of survey respondents agreed that "there is a tendency for similar groups of people to have similar discussions in different partnership forums". Over two thirds of respondents agreed that "too many partnership meetings that should be driving work are talking shops".
Of course partnership work is important. I’ve written many times here about how some of society’s intractable problems cannot be solved by a single agency and that more need to step up and take their share of responsibility. Some of the work I have been involved in over the years would simply collapse if multiple agencies didn’t work together, pulling in the same direction according to their strengths to achieve holistic outcomes.
Collaboration works, while silo practices inevitably fail. The report took me back to the hundreds of wasted hours I sat around tables with thoroughly decent and motivated people, discussing critical issues but often to no avail. I am not blaming everyone else for this inertia.
After all, I was a senior police officer and subsequently chaired partnership boards so I wish I’d been bolder in calling out the cost, time and energy chewing the same fat drained. I’d love to have done more but the system and nature of some multi agency partnerships made that nigh on impossible. I’m not saying that internal police meetings were the gold standard but – especially at the tactical level – they were demonstrably action and outcome focused.
Issues were discussed, solutions considered and remedies agreed upon, for which an individual or department would be held to account and woe betide them if they didn’t deliver by the next time we met. Some partnership meetings aren’t set up to achieve this. Firstly, attendees often have different decision making powers; some can commit significant sums of money to a shared activity whilst others have to pass the request up the line, the message often being diluted on the way.
Some agencies don’t share boundaries and some had conflicting, or at least different, priorities from others. One contributor to the APCC report said: "Looking across our police force area we had 20 strategies, and a strategy is basically a set of priorities (say five per strategy, gives you 100 priorities). If you have 20 sets of priorities (sic) in partnership, you really don’t have any priorities, it just becomes white noise.
" So true. Often, I would find that some partnership meetings became an end in themselves. Their outcomes are a masterclass in procrastination: "Note the report", "Agree to keep this issue under review", or worse still, "Form a sub-committee/working group to examine the matter closer".
Rarely was anyone actually tasked to do something concrete, with clear timescales and outcome expectations. The meeting juggernaut just rumbled on with no apparent purpose. It is almost impossible to estimate the overall cost v benefit of partnership meetings.
It’s greater than the salary time of those involved; there is an opportunity cost as to what else everyone there could be doing, but in these straightened times and with a local government reorganisation underway, surely now we should re-set the partnership landscape, ditch meetings and arrangements that don’t deliver and use the millions saved to make a real difference to people’s lives. Former Brighton and Hove police chief Graham Bartlett’s Brighton-based Jo Howe crime novel series continues with City on Fire which is now available in paperback..
