Lancashire Constabulary - UK

ANALYSIS: Members of the public in England and Wales will have the opportunity to cast their vote for either the police and crime commissioner or mayor who will have responsibility for policing in their region; after the 'blue wave' of 2021, Policing Insight looks at the candidates, the political landscape, and the potential outcomes of this year's elections.

ANALYSIS: Next week will see police and crime commissioner, mayoral and local council elections in the UK, with a general election due in the next few months; former police officer Mark Brown, now a policing commentator and associate lecturer at the University of Southampton, looks at the neighbourhood policing proposals being put forward by the two main political parties, and how they could affect frontline delivery.

ANALYSIS: With violence reduction units set to be expanded across all of England and Wales, Policing Insight’s Ian Weinfass spoke to several of those involved in the work to date, asking how we will know when they’ve really been successful and what practitioners in the new areas will need to know.

POLICE FORCE FOCUS: Candidate details for the PCC Elections 2024 in Lancashire, along with details of previous PCC election outcomes.

INTERVIEW: In the second part of Policing Insight’s exclusive interview with the new National Police Chiefs’ Council robotic process automation (RPA) lead Gillian Routledge, she spoke to James Sweetland about why she was so keen to take on this role, how she thinks RPA is perceived by those inside policing, and what it takes to actually implement these tools within forces.

INTERVIEW: In an exclusive two-part interview, Gillian Routledge – the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s new Robotic Process Automation (RPA) lead – spoke to Policing Insight’s James Sweetland about what RPA can offer policing, why it’s likely to free up police time rather than take out jobs, and her vision for making the most of this exciting set of tools.

ANALYSIS: Last month the Global Law Enforcement & Public Health Association (GLEPHA) published a series of reports as part of the ‘Envisaging the future of policing and public health’ project, covering a range of topics including harm reduction, diversion, and policing mental health; in the fourth in a series of seven articles, Policing Insight’s Thomas James looks at GLEPHA’s report on violence prevention programmes and police partnership from England, Iraq, Mexico and Fiji.

FREE SUBSCRIBER ACCESS: Policing Insight welcomes officers and staff at South Yorkshire Police who now have FREE subscriber access with the start of a new organisation wide subscription. They join a community of officers and staff from many other UK and international police, criminal justice and emergency services organisations with an interest in progressive policing. Read on to find out how to use your FREE subscriber access.

INTERVIEW: Police personnel and their families continue to be at risk from online hate and harmful threats; Professor Petra Bayerl from the Centre of Excellence in Terrorism, Resilience, Intelligence & Organised Crime Research (CENTRIC), explained to Policing Insight how a ground-breaking project with six police forces is seeking to better understand the challenges, risks and harms police officers and their families face when online.

FREE SUBSCRIBER ACCESS: Policing Insight welcomes staff at the Inspectorate of Policing for Ontario, Canada who now have FREE access with the start of a new organisation wide subscription. They join a community of officers and staff from many other UK and international police, criminal justice and emergency services organisations with an interest in progressive policing. Read on to find out how to use your FREE subscriber access.

ANALYSIS: Policing Insight’s Ian Weinfass reveals how many candidates have applied for each of the top jobs in policing in England and Wales over the past three years, and finds out what the likes of HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary Andy Cooke, Association of Police and Crime Commissioners Chair Donna Jones and others believe this shows about the state of the process.

INNOVATION: With the growing UK national focus on the benefits of robotic process automation (RPA) – including the appointment of a new National Police Chiefs’ Council lead – local innovation in this area is all the more interesting; Essex Police are among those trying to leverage the maximum potential from this and other new technology, and highlighted some of those developments at a recent one-day conference, as this first in a series of articles on the event by Policing Insight’s James Sweetland explains.

OPINION: Recent comments from Home Secretary Suella Braverman around the policing of the pro-Palestinian protests have once again called into question UK policing’s political independence; but former officer and University of Derby Policing Lecturer Tom Andrews argues that such independence has been largely illusionary in the past, and that a Royal Commission into policing is essential if such independence is to be guaranteed in the future.

FREE SUBSCRIBER ACCESS: Policing Insight welcomes Greater Manchester Police officers and staff who now have FREE access with the start of a new organisation wide subscription. They join a community of officers and staff from many other UK and international police, criminal justice and emergency services organisations with an interest in progressive policing. Read on to find out how to use your FREE subscriber access.

FREE SUBSCRIBER ACCESS: Policing Insight welcomes officers and staff of British Overseas Territories police forces who now have FREE access with the start of new organisation wide subscriptions purchased by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. They join a community of officers and staff from many other UK and international police, criminal justice and emergency services organisations with an interest in progressive policing. Read on to find out how to use your FREE subscriber access.

ANALYSIS: In the latest in our series of articles on the policing workforce in England and Wales, Policing Insight’s Ian Wiggett reviews the official data for the 2022/23 financial year, and explores some of the resulting challenges facing police forces – including the significant reduction in staff and PCSOs, the struggles for some around retention and resignations, and how to adapt to the ‘new normal’.

FEATURE: Police officers and staff who have been assaulted or abused can struggle to talk about the impact of their experiences; now a new online training package – the first time wellbeing training has been made available digitally on a national scale – is providing support material that can be viewed in confidence, reinforcing the wider work of Operation Hampshire and Oscar Kilo, the National Police Wellbeing Service for England and Wales, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Frontline officers can feel overwhelmed by a rising tide of new multimedia evidence sources, plus ever more local and national policies. Ian Williams explains how new policies and legislation can be quickly incorporated into Pronto workflows – helping officers progress investigations to the highest standards from reporting through to prosecution with Motorola Solutions’ digital policing platform.

FEATURE: With police forces in England and Wales facing challenges around building female representation in the service – particularly from seldom-heard communities – Sgt Mussa Meman and PC Nikki Nabi of Lancashire Police identified that the way the police fitness test was administered was leading to a disproportionate number of failures among female applicants, and created a new community focused approach that has significantly improved pass rates and helped to increase female representation within the force.

FEATURE: The recent announcement that all forces in England and Wales will now attend every burglary – coupled with a change in crime counting rules to distinguish between home break-ins and thefts from sheds and garages – has been heralded by police chiefs as an important step towards greater support for victims, improved transparency, and a return to policing fundamentals, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

ANALYSIS: When the Government announced its intention to recruit an additional 20,000 officers in under four years, there were many who doubted it could be done, but the target has been surpassed by some way; with headcount grown by 20,951 from the November 2019 baseline, and only one force – the Metropolitan Police – failing to recruit its allocation, Ian Wiggett takes a deeper look at what all this means for the service.

OPINION: As he approaches his retirement, Deputy Chief Constable Ian Critchley, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for child protection, reflects on 30 years spent in policing, and in particular the work he has done to combat child abuse in all forms.

ANALYSIS: It’s long been argued that the police funding formula in England and Wales, which relies mainly on a combination of central government grant and locally set precept, is in need of reform, and fails to recognise the areas of greatest need; Policing Insight’s Ian Wiggett looks at the increasing dependence on the precept, the challenges around deprivation, and whether politicians are really willing to tackle a funding conundrum that has no comfortable fix.

FREE SUBSCRIBER ACCESS: Policing Insight welcomes officers and staff at Northumbria Police and South Wales Police who now have FREE access with the start of new organisation wide subscriptions purchased by their forces. They join a community of officers and staff from many other UK and international police, criminal justice and emergency services organisations with an interest in progressive policing. Read on to find out how to use your FREE subscriber access.