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International Journal of Project Management Vol. 13, No. 6, pp. 403-405, 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd. Printed in Great Britain

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Policing--give us the tools and we will do the job: 1992/93 Urban Crime Fund Programme

William Lloyd Merseyside Police, Derby Street, Prescot, Merseyside, UK

The British police service has been constantly scrutinised in recent years and responded with the cry of " I f only we were given the resources!" The response of the Home Office was to offer the Merseyside Police Authority additional funds of £4.5 million to apply to specific crime fighting projects, but in specific geographical areas. After the initial euphoria died down, it became clear that new systems would have to be set up very quickly to implement the 60 individual schemes that were approved and to maintain effective operational, political and financial control. The schemes had few c o m m o n themes and covered a wide range of ideas, including disorder patrols, community policing, youth activities, suspect targeting, geographic targeting, driver behaviour, etc. The only common factors were the need for administrative and operational speed. With a total lead-in time of 3 months, the systems were developed and refined to allow the Merseyside Police to take advantage of the extra funding and improve their ability to fight crime in Merseyside. With such a short lead-in t ime and no previous experience in Government finance directives, many long standing organisational norms were discarded, allowing the initiative to achieve all objectives on time, with a slight eventual agreed overspend of 1.3%.

Keywords: co-ordination of policing projects

On 26 November 1992, the Home Secretary, Kenneth Baker, announced that £1 lm of urban programme funding was to be made available to the police authorities of Merseyside, West Yorkshire and Northumbria. The money was to be used to "fight crime in the inner cities". These three authorities were invited to submit effective and innovative proposals involving local communities in the fight against urban crime. "This heralds a new partnership between government, police and the people of our cities. We will have much to learn from this experiment" (Kenneth Baker, Home Secretary). Merseyside was to gain an extra £4 456 000 under the proposal, to be spent during the fiscal year ending March 1993. The geographic areas involved were those covered by existing urban policies and represented a wide range of urban problems. The police response had to have some link with those areas and problems.

In essence, central government sought to apply the urban policy model to the social ill of "c r ime" . Central govern-

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ment would meet 75% of the cost and allow local extra spending to cover the other 25%. No spending would be allowed under the initiative after 31 March 1993. The existing local government finance model was to be used to set spending limits of £3.156m for revenue items and £1.3m for capital items, i.e. for every £3 spent on revenue items, we could spend £1 on supporting capital items.

Although the Home Secretary made tentative suggestions about the type of schemes that the money could be directed at, it was clear that all those " . . . if only we could afford t o . . . " ideas that had been put on the back burner could now be seriously considered.

D r a f t i n g the p l a n

The police authority asked the Chief Constable, Jim Sharpies, to draw up a programme of initiatives to make the most of this opportunity to improve the quality of life for the population of Merseyside. The Chief Constable sought to apply the guidance he had been given, by canvassing his 6000 member workforce and local organisations and District Councils for suggestions in the areas of autocrime,

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1992/93 Urban Crime Fund Programme: W Lloyd

drugs, or violence. His closing comment in this process was "The challenge has been received, we must respond".

Within 12 weeks a final package of 60 schemes was put together that involved local authorities, residents' associ- ations, community forums, probation services, social services, education departments, 'safer cities', city challenge, Department of the Environment, city action team, private sector bodies, victim support schemes, crime prevention panels, Merseyside ambulance service and housing associ- ations. The schemes included a wide range of innovative measures to fight urban crime, to increase security and reduce the fear of crime. None of these schemes would otherwise have been funded.

Putting the plan into action

At about this point it became clear how complex it would be to implement, monitor and control such a wide range of operations that had no common features except that the participants were to be paid from the urban crime fund. Add to this the requirement that these people still had to carry out their full time roles within the Merseyside police and the risk of chaos became apparent. A tremendous amount of consultation went on in a short period, com- parisons were made with "plaiting jam" or "nailing jelly to the ceiling".

From these consultations a totally new administrative and financial infrastructure was designed to serve the manage- ment and information needs of the urban crime fund but without disrupting the ongoing activities of the Merseyside police. Application of management science, a "can do" attitude and advice from local authority workers saw a set of systems quickly set up focusing upon nominated project managers. The need for administrative speed identified difficulties with existing force procedures, so major amend- ments to the accounting and purchasing systems were quickly developed and instituted.

The design of all systems, their construction, management and closedown (at the end of the initiative), was vested in a four member unit set up for the task, reporting directly to the Deputy Chief Constable. This unit was responsible for the ongoing monitoring and troubleshooting of the whole initiative.

Nominated project managers were given a crash course in project implementation and management and responded with great enthusiasm. The new accounting system that had to be set up required that project managers be trained in elementary financial management (something that had never been required of them before). The level of enthusiasm that project managers displayed here was more muted but the topic was tackled. All training and follow-up support fell to the monitoring unit.

A contract was arranged with the universities of Liverpool and Manchester to evaluate the performance of the urban crime fund on Merseyside. This required that verifiable data was supplied to them for their analysis, another task that fell to the monitoring unit. The advice of the university team proved to be an unexpected bonus in the setting of aims and performance measures.

The year As expected, the year proved eventful. The variety of schemes meant that it was difficult to approach their needs

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in a single way. Problems occurred in the financial field that were often first noticed by the monitoring unit and the elected members of the police authority had to be kept aware of the progress of the overall scheme. By using a series of carefully planned information systems, the monitoring unit were able to assess accurately the present position in the financial plan to within 2 weeks and quickly bring on schemes from a reserve list to take up any identified under- spend. The financial procedures of the police authority were temporarily amended to ensure speedy actions where possible, and all those involved gained further insight into the political and operational workings of their own organisation. This still continues to benefit the Merseyside Police and the authority as the Government programme of police reforms gathers speed.

By being able to produce accurate and up-to-date infor- mation, the monitoring unit found themselves to be a victim of their own success. Local representatives of the Govern- ment departments regularly used the unit as a contact point to answer queries from ministers and other agencies, as did local politicians, social services and media bodies. The prepared briefings and channels of communication that the monitoring unit had set up performed well, resulting in many positive contacts.

The management of the overall scheme was aimed at ensuring that all the needs of the local and central govern- ment were met (political accountability), the necessary information was made available for the university team (evaluation system) and accounting standards were com- plied with (financial information system). The overall project brief was to ensure that the best possible policing use be made of the funds available and that this could be substantiated.

Performance By the end of the whole initiative the independent evaluation team were able to describe the Merseyside Police urban crime fund as successful in all three levels of analysis, i.e. the overall scheme, each theme (autocrime, drugs and violence) and seven selected representative schemes. The full evaluation report is in A4 format and slightly under 2 ft thick. To date there have been no disputes in the methodology of the evaluation. The independent evaluation team provided an evaluation report for each of the 60 schemes, as well as the overall success summary. All were positively appraised with one caveat on a single scheme.

Using other measures of success the urban crime fund was a success, it was completed on time and with only a minor overspend of 1.3%.

Although operating within the Merseyside Police, the schemes were effectively being run on behalf of the Home Office, their response to the publication of the evaluation report was very positive " . . . beyond expectations in dealing with a new initiative . . . many valuable lessons have been learned in Merseyside Police that will be applied throughout the British police service."

Lessons learned Working with little previous policy guidance, in new administrative fields, 60 totally independent innovative policing schemes were set up to "fight crime in our cities" taking advantage of central government funding. The

1992/93 Urban Crime Fund Programme: W Lloyd

setting up of these schemes and their associated information systems, was a new experience for the Merseyside Police. The management of complexity was further complicated by the day-to-day involvement of central and local government bodies, as well as the desire to cause minimal disruption to the existing Merseyside Police activities.

The construction, management and decommissioning of a 60 section organisation within an existing Police force had never been attempted before. The use of nominated project managers with actual authority to use resources within wide parameters broke the existing cultural rules of closely defined areas of responsibility and the tendency for upward consultation on all matters. The monitoring unit was charged with ensuring that such project managers were considerably empowered, a task that required a delicate balance of vigilance, tact and forceful actions. The lines of communic- ation between local authorities and police officers required a different approach to the existing semi-military model that the police service tends to apply. Many of the internal systems of control that were hastily developed have been refined and taken on as permanent in several administrative fields.

Pride in achieving objectives is a great motivator. In the urban crime fund project individuals achieved their objec- tives, the means by which it was done were independently verified as effective and efficient and in consequence, a general climate of success was created. This has been taken forward and used in further innovative actions in the force.

Having been given the tools, Merseyside Police were able to do the job.

Bill Lloyd is a serving Police Officer in the Merseyside Police, England. A Management and Policy studies graduate of the University of Liverpool, he has been involved in a range of new policing initiatives during his 17 years police service. His present role is in the quality assurance of operational policing. He can be contacted on 44 (+151) 777 6683.

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