Recommendation - Cheshire Constabulary, December 2022
We identified organisational learning from a Death or serious injury review where several calls to the police expressed concern for a man's welfare. One of the calls exceeded its target response time, due to other incidents on the area, but no attempts were made to obtain resources from another unit to respond.
IOPC reference
Recommendations
The IOPC recommends that Cheshire Constabulary should ensure that the procedures for call handlers to escalate incidents are set out clearly in force policy.
This follows an IOPC review of a Serious Injury investigation, where a man took an overdose following several calls to the police expressing concern for his welfare, over a number of hours.
A local investigation by the force concluded that more could have been done to try to obtain assistance from beyond the Local Policing Unit covering the man’s address and that the closing of the second incident log without reviewing the threat assessment and call grading may have delayed the police response.
Cheshire Constabulary advised the IOPC that there was a procedure for resourcing incidents that have exceeded the target response time, by escalating them to supervisors for consideration of requesting support from officers from a nearby Local Policing Unit. This had been communicated to staff by email in the past but was not documented in any force policy or guidance. The force has also advised that a new response model has been launched and its grading and deployment policy is due for review.
Accepted action:
Cheshire Constabulary accepts that an escalation policy/procedure should be clear to staff working in the Force Control Room (FCC).
We currently operate under a ‘no borders’ response working practice where we risk assess incidents and dispatch officers regardless of where they work particularly if they are the closest resource and we thus feel this specific issue would not arise again.
Additionally, all incidents in the force are subject to a detailed THRIVE C assessment which reviews vulnerability, risk and repeat status. Where an incident is regraded, this must be subject to a ‘regraded THRIVE C assessment proforma’.
We have focused on our grading and response policy which has improved significantly since this serious injury investigation and which we can evidence through detailed performance data.