THE OVERALL performance of police in Avon and Somerset have been praised by inspectors following a recent assessment.

Following last year’s PEEL (Police effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy) assessment, Wendy Williams from Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary has said how impressed she was by the force, which received the second highest grade of “Good” across the board.

In her observations, Ms Williams said she was “particularly impressed by the force’s comprehensive understanding of the existing demand for its services, which is based on a wide range of information and a sophisticated appreciation of the capacity of the workforce and the workload it carries.

“The force is able to identify and assess new and emerging demands for services, and its analysis is informed by tracking changes in public expectations and by its understanding of technological advances.”

She added: “The force is adept at restructuring and modernising its workforce to equip it with the skills to meet future needs. It has achieved this through close alignment of the force’s financial and workforce planning, which has, for example, increased the force’s capacity to investigate child abuse and serious sexual offences.”

In the most recent assessment report relating to the force’s effectiveness, Ms Williams said that she was pleased with the improvements that have been made to keep residents safe and to reduce crime – in particular in response to missing children and domestic abuse.

She said: “The needs of victims are considered throughout the force’s processes. This is reflected in its work with partner organisations and in the improvement in how it shares information to assess risks and make safeguarding arrangements.”

However she added that more could be done to involve neighbourhood teams to disrupt organised crime.

Concerns were also raised over the supervision of crime reporting and by inaccuracies in initial crime-recording decisions.

Ms Williams welcomed the progress made in addressing the concerns from past inspections but said that further work was needed if detainees were to receive consistently good care.

She also said that while there were well-established vetting procedures and encouragement for feedback through the workforce, she said that there was a lack of consistency in the arrangements for managing and improving the performance of staff and officers.

Summing up, she said that the force provided a good level of service to the people of Avon and Somerset, and commending them for having maintained, and in some respects improved, its performance since the previous assessment.