CoPaCC invites Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) and their Offices (OPCCs), plus their London equivalent, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) to contribute to this summer’s CoPaCC “PCCs and Statutory Transparency” Thematic Report 2015.
CoPaCC has today announced that it is to re-examine how well PCCs meet their statutory transparency responsibilities. CoPaCC first reviewed PCCs’ ability to meet these statutory responsibilities one year after the first PCC elections, with our report published in November 2013. As CoPaCC’s Chief Executive, I subsequently gave evidence on our Thematic’s findings to the Home Affairs Select Committee. The Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Keith Vaz MP, at one point suggested to me that CoPaCC might act as “a national register that just collates all this information together” – which is precisely what CoPaCC is now leading.
During July and August 2015, CoPaCC will repeat our November 2013 review process. We will again use, as our benchmark, the fifty detailed transparency factors identified by the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011, and set out in detail in the Elected Local Policing Bodies (Specified Information Order) 2011. These fifty can usefully be grouped into six statutory transparency ‘themes’, covering:
- who they are and what they do;
- what they spend and how they spend it;
- what their priorities are and how they are doing;
- how they make, record and publish their decisions;
- what policies and procedures govern the office of the PCC;
- public access to a register of interests.
This short announcement is to alert PCCs, OPCCs and MOPAC to this work. CoPaCC will shortly send out an invitation for these bodies to work with us on this latest review.
The participation is voluntary and we have decided against issuing PCCs, OPCCs and MOPAC with formal Freedom of Information requests for this information, as we recognise that FoIs create an additional – and, in this case, unnecessary – burden on their recipients. However we will be publishing the results in full including whether a submission was received.
Please note that to augment the report, we also encourage and accept submissions from other stakeholders with an interest in PCC’s performance for example police and crime panels, public bodies, representative organisations, third sector and charities.
CoPaCC aims to publish the resultant “PCCs and Statutory Transparency” Thematic Report in September 2015.
Please address any enquiries regarding the CoPaCC “PCCs and Statutory Transparency” Thematic Report and the audit process to Bernard Rix; email [email protected]
CoPaCC is an independent organisation established shortly after the first Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) elections in November 2012 to monitor policing governance in England and Wales.
