GM police criticised again over delays in attending incidents involving vulnerable people

The police inspectorate has raised concerns about the safety of the public in Greater Manchester.

HMICFRS, which oversees police and fire and rescue services, said Greater Manchester Police (GMP) is still failing to protect vulnerable victims of crime, some four years after this was first identified as a problem.

The city-region’s force is already in special measures following a damning report which outlined serious failures to investigate crimes.

GMP has apologised, saying the service is not what the public deserves, but said work is under way to put things right.

What does the latest report say?

HMICFRS made the latest in a string of visits to GMP to monitor the issue of responding to vulnerable people, such as domestic abuse victims, a few weeks ago.

The inspectorate found that the police force had again failed to make the expected improvements.

The inspectors found GMP does not respond to emergency or priority incidents within the timescales it has set itself, with significant delays in attending incidents where vulnerable people are at risk.

As a result, HMICFRS has said it is concerned about public safety in Greater Manchester.

The inspectorate acknowledged GMP has recently published its strategic plan, but says it is not clear how this will be translated into the significant improvements necessary and explanations of how vulnerable people will be protected are inadequate.

Reviewing cases involving vulnerable people, inspectors found victims of crimes waiting for days for police to attend, incidents being closed without officers being deployed at all and a backlog of some 2,700 calls awaiting responses.

How long has this been going on for?

The inspectorate first said that GMP was failing to respond appropriately to vulnerable people in 2017.

This included routinely failing to attend incidents within an appropriate timescale.

The inspectorate went back to the force in both 2019 and 2020 and on both occasions found GMP was still failing to address the issues.

This all arose from a PEEL report into GMP. PEEL reports are used by the inspectorate to assess the effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy of police forces.

The repeated failure to make sufficient improvements has now been led to a cause for concern being issued.

What recommendations have now been made?

HMICFRS has now made a number of recommendations to GMP in the wake of the latest visit without sufficient improvements being made.

It said that GMP should immediately improve its capability and capacity to deploy resources to incidents that require either an immediate (15 minutes) or prompt (1 hour) police response.

It also said that within three months the force should review the risk assessment tool it is using to prioritise responses to calls.

The command and control system also needs an overhaul to ensure police are allocated in a timely manner and a performance framework should be introduced to support call handling and despatch staff, HMICFRS said.

What does the inspectorate say?

Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary Andy Cooke said: “Greater Manchester Police has a critical duty to keep the public safe, and vulnerable people deserve the very best service.

“Whilst accepting the very recent positive approach to improving the performance of the force, I am deeply concerned that GMP has consistently failed to make significant improvements in how it responds to vulnerable victims of crime.

“We told Greater Manchester Police to make these improvements in 2017, yet it has still not made sufficient progress.

“It has now reached the point where we are concerned about public safety in Greater Manchester.

“The people of Greater Manchester will rightly expect their local police force to do all it can to protect them from harm.

“We will therefore be closely monitoring the force’s performance to make sure that public safety comes first.”

What has GMP said?

GMP chief constable Stephen Watson said: “We recognise and accept HMICFRS findings about our continued weaknesses, which follows a routine inspection.

“These describe a quality of service which is not yet where we want it to be and which I know is far from what the people of Greater Manchester deserve.

“For this simple fact I humbly apologise. I am truly sorry for every time we have not met the needs of victims of crime.

“I can assure you that our top priority is to keep people safe.

“The findings of this report are deep-rooted. Whilst we are making progress in key areas,

“I fully accept that we need to move quickly to address the long-term, fundamental and systemic problems driving these failings.

“We were fully aware of the issues raised by HMICFRS which has already informed the basis of the comprehensive and well-received forward plan I published recently.

“Work to translate the strategic plan into a practical series of improvement activities across the operating model has already begun which will address these problems expeditiously.

“Immediate actions I have taken include bolstering the leadership on the ground, driving an increase in staffing in call handling, and conducting a wholesale reform of the force’s local policing model.

“Many of these initiatives, while complex in their nature, are already under-way but will take time to yield results.

“Improving our service is critical, therefore I have also organised peer support from the country’s highest performing forces which starts on Monday, in an effort to generate actions we can take quickly or may not have already identified”