Alison Hernandez, Police and Crime Commissioner presented this item to the Panel and highlighted the following key points:

Devon and Cornwall Police have gone into engage mode with HMICFRS with issues around public contact amongst two other issues;

Increase in the need for 999 calls and how that increase hadf provided challenges in the contact centre;

The introduction of voice recognition in July 2019 had one year of improving call time for those that had been receiving crimes such as domestic or sexual violence or hate but had got worse after that year;

The Police and Crime Commissioner conducted a public scrutiny review of 101 in 2020/21 which resulted in 12 recommendation made to the Chief Constable;

In response to questions raised it was reported:

Jim Colwille (Temporary Chief Constable) had been holding corporate responsibility which previously been delegated down, this had in a short space of time had a positive impact in attempting to tackle the issues that had been common for the contact centre over a number of years. Jim had brought in Humberside Police who had scored outstanding on inspections and had the best contact centre in the country to assist Devon and Cornwall Police in bringing about positive change. Jim had also brought in consultancy services to map processes of the contact centre which were found to be cumbersome;

Technology had negatively impacted the contact centre and it was acknowledged to be far behind local authorities and their systems;

The Police contact service had been dealing in greater numbers with calls that were non-crime related however wouldn’t be picked up by other agencies. The Police had also been dealing with incidences of mental health in greater numbers which should be dealt with by health services;

The removal of an email address for contacting the police had been due to many submissions being too vague resulting in extra work trying to clarify the requests. The Web form had aimed to rectify the issue in getting the member of the public to produce detail in their submissions;

The force had begun to implement a new system called NICHE which would enable better integration. The Commissioner highlighted to the Panel that performance cou;d dip when reporting at the next Police and Crime Panel due to the implementation of the software;

The Commissioner had requested that the wait time for 999 calls to be answered to reduce to 10 seconds by the end of the calendar year/ The Commissioner had also pushed for p2 calls to be triaged by the end of the calendar year which was accepted by the temporary Chief Constable;

There had been an Improvement plan developed for the contact centre and on receipt of the HMICFRS report, the Commissioner would share the improvement plan with the Panel;

On receipt of the HMICFRS report the Commissioner would circulate this to the Devon and Cornwall Police and Crime Panel members for their consideration of an Extraordinary General Meeting;

The Contact centre would remain a standing item on the agenda for the Panel until call centre inefficiencies were nullified;

Following the Commissioners scrutiny on the Contact Centre, recommendations were not implemented by the Chief Constable, the Panel were advised that there had been significant distractions in the year but with the arrival of the new Chief Constable it was hoped the recommendations on improving performance were picked up;

The Commissioner expressed frustration to the Panel at a systemic policing problem that had been occurring nationally but was a particular problem in Devon and Cornwall Police force in ‘career policing’ which had caused real issues in terms of leadership within the force;

The Bude Enquiry office would be opening in January 2023;

Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly Contact Centre had come 33^rd out of 43 forces in terms of performance. The Panel were advised that 999 calls could trip through to other forces in the country but 101 calls would not;