Feedback

The main aims of the survey were to:

• Explore potential attributes of a Police & Crime Commissioner
• Measure perceived propensity to vote in the election of a Police & Crime Commissioner
• Determine preferred methods of communication and feedback
• Explore perceived impact of a Police & Crime Commissioner on policing and accountability

Key points:

Current performance monitoring:

• 64% of you are aware that the Police Authority is responsible for monitoring the performance of Lancashire Constabulary.

Attributes and experience a potential PCC should have:

When we asked you about what attributes and experience a potential PCC should have:Honesty, integrity and trustworthiness were the attributes most frequently mentioned closely followed by knowledge and experience of policing. Also receiving high numbers of mentions were the qualities of being approachable, people-focussed, straight talking, a good communicator, non-political and fair. Being supportive of local communities was also considered important.

Representativeness of the PCC

Just under three quarters of you (73%) agree that it is not possible for one person to be representative of the population of Lancashire but nearly all of you (95%) agree that the PCP (Police & Crime Panel) should be made up of people who are representative of local communities and nearly three quarters (71%) agree that it is important that the new structure is representative of minority groups in the community. Only around a fifth of you (18%) agreed that it doesn’t matter if the PCC is representative of local communities or not.

Experience of Policing

When considering the results it can be seen that you felt that experience of policing was a key attribute for the PCC.  84% of you felt that the PCC should have some knowledge of policing and 57% felt that he/she should have direct experience of policing.

Experience of politics

In terms of experience of politics you were asked whether the PCC should have some knowledge of election processes, to which 47% said ‘yes’ and in relation to having direct experience of working in politics, 23% said ‘yes’.  Given that many of you specifically expressed the view that the PCC should not have a political leaning this result is not surprising.

So would you vote for a PCC?

Following this line of questioning, we asked you how likely it would be that you would vote in an election for a PCC. 55% of you stated that you would be ‘very likely' to vote.

Length of term that the PCC should be in post

The proposals put forward by the Government in relation to PCC’s suggest an initial four year term with the potential for re-election for a further four years. When we asked you, given that this is a new role, what length of term you felt to be most appropriate, a majority of 41% felt that an initial two year term would be most appropriate, 25% said three years and 27% considered four years most appropriate.

PCC communication and consultation

It was no surprise that you are in favour of online options for both providing opinions and receiving feedback than the more traditional pen and paper methods, with 86% opting to provide opinions via online surveys, 73% opting for updates via e-mail sign up and 64% opting for internet/websites for feedback.

In relation to the frequency of your expectations for being consulted about policing issues by the PCC, the majority (42%) consider two or three times a year to be sufficient, though just over a quarter (26%) felt that every few months would be more appropriate and just over a tenth (14%) felt that once a year would be enough.

Measures of PCC success

It was considered important to ask you how you would measure the success of the PCC given that their role would be directly elected.  As expected, improved local policing, feelings of safety, police response and visible policing were considered to have the greatest impact on your perception of the PCCs success.  Interestingly, the measure least likely to have any impact on PCC success is that of lower council tax for policing.

Overall opinion of the PCC proposal

In the survey we reminded you of the fact that the PCC will replace the current Police Authority structure and we asked you to what extent you agreed or disagreed that the proposed changes would result in any specific activity or impact. The results show that 64% agreed that it will increase democratic accountability to the public, 59% agreed it will bring increased transparency and 58% agree it will result in better communication with the public.

Finally, we asked whether you agreed or disagreed that the proposed change was a good idea. In order to ascertain the impact of potential costs on your opinions, you were asked the question prior to being informed of the estimated costs of change and then again following that information.

Not surprisingly you were much less likely to agree that the proposals were a good idea once you were aware of the estimated costs; with 53% agreeing ‘strongly/slightly’ that it was a good idea prior to knowledge of the estimated costs and then only 31% of you agreeing once you were aware of the costs.

Therefore it has to be acknowledged that the impact of the potential costs will have an impact on perceptions of the proposals overall.

Conclusion

On the whole it can be said that you were fairly positive about the specific aspects of proposed changes, though the fact that only just over half of you considered it to be a good idea prior to knowing the estimated costs of the change and that just less than a third felt it was a good idea once aware of the costs,  then it would seem that if public opinion were to be taken into account in making the decision as to whether Police Authorities should be replaced by directly elected PCC’s and PCP’s findings suggest that they should not.

Given the findings from the LOOP survey it is evident that during any transition to a new governance structure, you require education and further knowledge relating to governance and accountability structures within policing and clarification of the roles of those responsible for this prior to you being able to make an informed vote on a suitable PCC candidate.

With such definite preferences for online methods for consultation, communication and feedback;   the Authority needs to ensure that online options remain available to audiences such as LOOP panel members/visitors to ensure continued engagement during the transition process and that the LOOP website, LPA website and our social media channels are kept updated with relevant information.