Rural Crime (Mapping Scheme)

Damian Green Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Damian Green)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Bone. I congratulate not only the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) on introducing the House to what she rightly describes as a good news story, but the residents in Esclusham and Ponciau who developed the mapping scheme.

Like the hon. Lady, I represent a semi-rural constituency, so I know all about the tensions between the policing of rural and urban areas; people in each area feel that those in the other area get more than their fair share of the cake. It is always difficult for police forces to decide where to point their efforts. However, it is obvious that in rural areas local information such as land ownership and livestock details can be important to police attending incidents. I pay tribute to the hon. Lady’s constituents for gathering the information to provide the digital map that she described, which will help North Wales police tackle rural crime in the area. The other key element to the scheme is that the information can be accessed via a tablet, helping the police to get the information while they are out on the ground. That keeps police on the street—perhaps in this case, in the field, but certainly out of the station—for longer than would otherwise be the case.

The hon. Lady rightly laid great stress on what wider applicability there can be for this type of local initiative. The answer is, “a great deal.” As I set out in a speech to police and crime commissioners in January, and again at a recent conference we held for digital pathfinder police forces, one of the biggest opportunities for the police to improve the service that they give the public is through embracing new technology. It allows the police to address not only the challenges posed by rural crime, but new emerging threats.

I will talk about the wider national scene first. Clearly, technology of the type the hon. Lady has described is shifting people’s behaviour and expectations of public services. Policing is responding to that, as the example of the mapping scheme shows, but the question that I pose regularly to those running individual forces and to PCCs is whether we are responding fast enough. Technology will be a significant key to the police continuing to cut crime in the future, and the intelligence input from the local community will continue to be vital in ensuring that technology is a success.

The hon. Lady referred to Sir Robert Peel; his famous dictum was:

“The police are the public and the public are the police.”

Part of that is an instinctive daily—hourly, if necessary—information flow between the police and the public. Technology makes that much easier than it ever has been, not just through social media but by various other means. The capacity of an informed, intelligent and helpful citizen to tell the police that something is going on somewhere where we could not remotely expect a police officer to be at that moment is greater than ever before.

The other side to that is that officers should have access to information while out on the streets, so that they can make quick decisions and avoid having to go back to the station to fill in forms or access IT systems. In a world of apps that allow people to book a taxi, find out when the bus is coming and do their banking on a smartphone, online police services and information should become business as usual. All forces now provide information via their website and Twitter; nearly all forces provide information via Facebook, and two thirds do so via YouTube. The public can contact individual officers or specific neighbourhood teams in many forces directly.

It is disappointing, however, that people cannot routinely do relatively basic things, such as reporting individual crimes, online. There are exceptions. Sussex police force allows the public to report crime online, and in Avon and Somerset, victims of reported crimes can track the progress of the police investigation online. I would like to see that spread across all forces.

We want to be ambitious, not simply doing old things with new tools but harnessing the potential of technology to bring about transformational change. That is what digital policing is about. Many forces are serious about digitisation, and I am delighted that 32 forces have signed up to be digital pathfinders. The College of Policing digital pathfinder programme is about bringing together forces that are serious about forging a digital path to share innovative ideas and identify collaboration opportunities. The programme will identify what a fully digital force will look like, highlighting how technology can improve the public experience of dealing with the police, and how officers can be more efficient and effective while out on the beat and can streamline processes to link up with their criminal justice partners. I hope that North Wales police will consider becoming a digital pathfinder, building on the innovation the debate today has highlighted. I am sure that the hon. Lady will want to challenge her local force and PCC on this matter.

One of the hon. Lady’s questions was about funding. She may be aware of the Home Office innovation fund. Recently we allocated over £11 million to IT projects from the 2013-14 precursor police innovation fund. There will be another round of allocations next year, for which the fund will be two and a half times the size. Much of that money is used on precisely the type of development in IT that she has described today.

For example, Avon and Somerset will use the funding to set up a citizen portal, which will allow the public to report and track non-emergency crimes. Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire were successful in their joint bid to support their work to build innovation in IT into their end-to-end business transformation project to make all possible processes digital. South Wales is using global positioning system technology linked to police data to provide officers with relevant information and intelligence about the area they are in, or a person they encounter. Building on that money, the police innovation fund will have £50 million available next year to support further innovation, including digital projects.

The Home Office has recently awarded a contract for the provision of evidence-based decision support, a service that will enable the right team of experts from industry, small and medium-sized enterprises and academia to be assembled to focus on the customer’s specific problems before making critical decisions. It will ensure that transformation programmes are fully sighted on the latest technical innovations. By using the service, forces can be confident that they are investing in the right things and not just the latest gadgets. Those things combine to provide an opportunity for forces to bring about real, transformational change.

The hon. Lady was right to praise the innovative work that the PCSO did in partnership with her local community in developing the system in Esclusham and Ponciau. PCSOs have played a huge part in providing effective neighbourhood policing, and they are a highly visible presence in communities. As that work shows, PCSOs have proved an invaluable link between the police and the communities that they serve by understanding and identifying local priorities, solving local problems and low-level crime, and engaging with the community. That is even more important in rural areas, which, as the hon. Lady knows, can present different challenges because of their size and the remoteness of their communities.

Lasting success in tackling rural crime will lie in local police and communities having a tailored joint response to the problems that they face, as we have seen in the partnership in north Wales. Although crime rates in rural areas tend to be relatively low, it is right that rural communities can know what crime looks like in their area and can hold somebody to account for doing something about it.

We provide the public with local information about crime and what the police have done in response to it. That information is regularly updated, so the public are able to hold local forces to account. Police.uk, the national crime and policing portal, provides rural communities with local information about crime and antisocial behaviour. Police.uk information is presented clearly and concisely, which enables the public to access crime and policing information in a way that is useful to them. The number of hits on police.uk since it was set up is evidence of how useful people find it.

We have shifted power to local communities through locally elected police and crime commissioners, who ensure that the public have a stronger voice in determining local policing priorities. A national rural crime network has been set up to tackle countryside crime, and it has been endorsed by 18 police and crime commissioners. It is good that PCCs in rural areas are coming together to discuss issues of mutual concern, and, as with the system that the hon. Lady spoke about, to spread best practice. As she rightly said, local initiatives can turn into national or international initiatives, which need to start somewhere.

[Susan Elan Jones]

I am grateful to the Minister for much of what he said. May I gently turn him to my question about whether he will meet with my constituents who are involved in the programme?

[Damian Green]

I was saving that for the end. I promise the hon. Lady that I will get there.

The rural crime network includes organisations dedicated to rural communities, which will be able to learn from one another and work collaboratively on new ideas and solutions that will benefit local people. Several PCCs have prioritised rural crime, which shows concretely that rural communities are able to have an effective say. In North Wales, the PCC has put in place a rural crime plan to engage with the rural community and address their concerns, including theft from rural areas of equipment and livestock. The force is providing a presence at farmers’ markets and agricultural events, and a rural crime team, comprising four full-time police constables and a sergeant, has been created.

Such schemes are not restricted to Wales. In Suffolk, the PCC has introduced a dedicated team of special constables to work with safer neighbourhoods teams to tackle offenders who target farms and rural communities, and rural crime police officers who will focus on hare coursing. The PCC in Thames Valley, Anthony Stansfeld, has also prioritised rural crime, and has introduced the “Country Watch” messaging system. So far, more than 7,500 people have signed up to the system to receive crime alerts and witness appeals, to see galleries of wanted criminals or suspects, and to receive information on community groups, events or meetings and details of operational work, by e-mail, text or telephone. Those examples from around the country illustrate that there is welcome new thinking and activity in the hon. Lady’s constituency and other parts of the country to deal with the problems that rural crime creates, and to enable police forces around the country to become more effective in stamping it out.

The hon. Lady asked whether I will meet her constituents. Of course I will; I am happy to do so. As I said, spreading best practice is an effective way of ensuring that good ideas have benefits beyond the local communities in which they were created. I hope that other communities will be inspired by the initiative that she spoke about and some of the others that I have mentioned. Rural crime is one the key examples where the use of new technology can, and will, transform policing, so that we deliver a better, more efficient service to the public. I hope that the good idea in the hon. Lady’s constituency will bring benefits to not only her constituents but many others around the country.