ASPS President Rob Hay on the importance of consulting Superintendents on major policing decisions.
Greater communication and consultation is important at every level, especially as we continue to grapple with challenging policing decisions. As ASPS President, I’m prioritising greater communication with our members and, as I tour departments and divisions across the country, I try to be transparent and increase the opportunity for consultation.
We now have more meetings that our members can attend and contribute to. We need to be in a two-way dialogue with our members to make sure that we’re properly supporting them and reflecting their views.
In policing, we already know the importance of consultation at a local level – if you’re trying to implement changes to anything from community policing to local service provision, providing an opportunity for local communities to contribute to it means that they feel part of the outcome. They feel that they’re co-designing with the service what the outcomes need to be.
That’s really important – and that’s the sort of collaborative approach that the ASPS executive committee tries to take with our members.
But the feedback I’m getting from our people is that communication from the force has become a casualty in terms of the difficult situation we find ourselves in with the Scottish Budget. Our members say that the organisation needs to spend more time in ‘listening mode’, so we will try to influence the force to improve that, as we move into the next half of the year.
Superintendents and Chief Superintendents say they are not being consulted on key decisions and, as a result, those decisions are not as well-thought-out as they could be. Decisions then have to be rowed back because of unintended consequences.
There have also been a few major decisions that ASPS has not been consulted on this year. We would normally expect to have been party to these through our apparatus for negotiation and consultation, the JNCC, through our People and Operations Delivery Group, or through the Scottish Police Consultative Forum, but they seem to have slipped between the cracks. We’re keen to get back on a sound footing with consulation and engagement
When I met recently with the Chief Constable, I restated ASPS commitment to consultation, engagement and collaboration and provided suggestions for how we can improve that. I’m delighted to say that the Chief was really receptive to that and recognises your crucial role in delivering her 2030 vision.
Superintendents are senior operational leaders in the service, the bridge between organisational strategy and frontline service delivery. We’re the ones who take the strategies and put them out on the street and make them actually work. And as a result, we know what the challenges will be and where the opportunities might be.
The consultation process is where decisions can be sharpened and plans can be honed, in order to get a better outcome. When police chiefs press forward with something that’s come purely from police headquarters, that doesn’t have a local footprint on it, that doesn’t reflect the challenges of the frontline, that’s when you potentially get unintended consequences. And every decision that we roll back costs us time, money and credibility.
I was once asked in interview: ‘How do you encourage your staff to challenge your decisions?’ And I said: ‘That’s easy, I don’t.’ The panel were shocked; they thought they’d uncovered some sort of tyrant! But I explained: ‘I involve my teams with the decisions I make so that they understand why they were made, have an opportunity to shape and influence those decisions, and a sense of ownership of the outcomes they create.’
The process of democratic decision-making empowers people. If someone at the top just rocks up and says: ‘This is what we’re going to do’, without some sort of discussion, it will cause people to be disengaged. If you look at our ASPS members’ survey last year, it supports that position.
We took a decision this year not to carry out our usual survey – not because we think there are no issues, but because the response to last year’s survey stalled. I’m pleased to say there was recognition of this at the recent Chief Constable’s Strategic Engagement Forum and we are looking forward to refreshed discussion with the Executive Team on taking these matters forward. As always, I’ll keep you posted with progress.”