Independent Review of National Policing Organisation Advisory Network

In a dynamic threat and risk landscape, a national policing organisation recognised the need to review its community engagement activity.

The activity, delivered via a national network of advisory groups, had not developed in a strategic and consistent way. This organic and unplanned development led to an incoherent model that no longer delivered for either the advisory group members or the organisation.

In conducting the review, the national policing organisation were primarily interested in ensuring that the review was impartial, robust and involved a team who had strong experience and insight into contemporary approaches to stakeholder and community experience.

The customer’s strategic priorities were to:

1. improve public trust and confidence in policing,
2. identify emerging threat trends and
3. improve effectiveness, efficiency, trust and legitimacy, which is a wider policing standard of operations.

We were commissioned to begin a ‘root and branch’ review with the following objectives:

• Examine the current strategy and structure of the advisory network and its related groups
• Understand what risk sat within the current membership and/or structure
• Consult the existing membership to understand what they expect from the organisation, and what they can offer.
• Consult with senior leaders within the organisation to understand what the organisation’s engagement function needs to deliver to support their work
• Design alternative options for a new engagement function that maximises community engagement and communications and limits or mitigates risk to the organisation.

Our team included a consultant with a PhD in community-based problem solving, developed from over a decade of research with several UK police forces. This was supplemented by several former long-serving police officers from BMT’s team to reach back to. We rapidly developed an investigation strategy, which was presented to primary stakeholders, and satisfied their desire for clear impartiality and a robust method of investigation.

We mobilised quickly, facilitating an in-person workshop to foster engagement and collaboration among the attendees. Over the course of the review, we conducted more than 50 hours of interviews in one month and surveyed the membership twice to verify the insights and observations developed during the interviews. Throughout the engagement, weekly progress updates were conducted for the client team to ensure alignment with their expectations.

The discovery work established 15+ design principles that guided the design of six target operating models. To aid in evaluating these options, a 10-point risk/benefit evaluation framework was co-designed with the client team. In a survey, the members were asked to rank the risk/benefit outcomes, and this ranking informed a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) workshop to evaluate the six possible alternatives.

A detailed Rough Order of Magnitude (RoM) cost model was established for each option, which included estimates of the additional time and resources that each option levered from volunteers and statutory partners. This evaluation exercise led to the down selection of three possible options for further consideration. 

The review established that the existing group design prevented the two primary outcomes of the network, that of effective community engagement and informed critical friendship, from being delivered. We identified significant risks of the existing operating model, including members being unclear of their purpose and contribution, being insufficiently informed, and the format of the network reducing the opportunity for genuine sharing of experience.

The range of options developed improved the benefits from current operations by 83%, with a reduction in cost of 70%.