Methodology

The commitment to undertake a ‘design led’ approach acknowledges that sufficient time needs to be given to developing a fuller and deeper understanding of how we deliver services to our communities and that spending time in the ‘understand’ space will reap longer term benefits for the organisation. The ’design led’ approach will be supported by the existing and ongoing work being undertaken by Strategy, Insight & Engagement (SIE), which will provide other key information and insights as this work develops.

Key Design Principles

As the organisation evolves in different areas, there is a need for the adoption and utilisation of a range of Key Design Principles. The use of these during current and future transformation will provide our leaders with the tools to shape this redesign successfully. It will allow for changes to be made effectively, and with collaboration towards the same shared vision for the future will in turn reduce friction and resistance to change. It will also ensure that future transformation is aligned to the organisation’s strategies. This clear vision of the future will assist in attracting and retaining staff to develop a highly skilled, enabled and accessible workforce.

Culture

 The organisation’s values, code of ethics and the standards of professional behaviour are vital to the culture and practice of everyone in policing.  These threads run through everything that we do.  The organisation is full of hard working, committed and professional officers and staff, but we can and must do more to ensure that discriminatory behaviour and misconduct are addressed, and that our people and communities continue to have trust and confidence in their police service.  Our Policing Together campaign will help address some of these challenges and we must also learn from the experiences of policing throughout the wider United Kingdom, including the findings of the recently published Baroness Louise Casey report.  The findings and recommendations within these key pieces of work will help us to build the right policing model for the future. 

User Research

Since 16^th January 2023, the LPSDR team have been undertaking activity in Forth Valley and Highlands and Islands Divisions, commencing in Inverness and Alloa before moving onto the other sub Divisions.  The below table provides an indicative timeline of activity which has been previously agreed with each Division to minimise impact on Local Policing Delivery.

The chosen format for delivery of this work provides officers on the ground one week speaking with our people, partners and public and then a week off site.  This off site week provides the team an opportunity to come together to share, validate and theme the captured insights which will assist in the next stage of the Service Design process. 

This engagement at the operational level has also been mirrored with our engagement at a strategic level with key partners.  We recognise the importance of collaboration and a exploration and development of integration opportunities.

At the time of writing this paper a total of 621 user research interactions have taken place. This represents 254 Police interactions in the form of interviews or group sessions, 259 public interactions either interviews in a public setting or attendance at a community event and 108 partner interviews. The scale of the user research will help LPSDR have the most complete evidence base available and continue to ensure that the voice of our people, partners and communities is represented in our work.

Insights

As the work has progressed, the User Research Team has begun to collate the insights. Qualitative data gathering is iterative, meaning each interview informs the next, and themes emerge over time. As such, it is too early to report on findings before the final report. However, topics emerging at this stage include but are not limited to:

Welfare & Wellbeing including entitlements and shift patterns.
Training & Transition how people come to a role, develop and handover.
Management of People the impact of abstractions, cover and staffing.
Work such as demand and workload.
Culture including perceptions on role, fear and blame.
Resources (Non-People) such as equipment and fleet.
Public Confidence including community engagement and visibility.
Leadership & Support at tutoring/mentoring, operational and strategic levels.
Location & Localisms including local work-arounds, parking, station location, rurality, and geographical boundaries.
Relationships both internally and with external partners, including around communication, such as raising issues, and silo working.

Examples of good practice are clear across different themes, roles and areas of work. For example:

In Alloa the team heard about Strive, an example of multi-agency work that seeks to provide the ‘right help at the right time’ to vulnerable citizens in Clackmannanshire. The group has been running for three years and includes partners such as NHS, Social Work (child and adult care), Education, Women’s Aid, Drug/Addiction Support Worker, Transform, Housing Association and Expert in Money Advice.

In Inverness the team heard about a number of wellbeing initiatives being considered, trialled and implemented, which seek to proactively engage and provide opportunities for officers and staff. These include Wellbeing Weekends (team visits to look at mental health and distress), Wellbeing Rooms, and Regional Wellbeing Officers.

The final report will present the themes above, and others, in more depth. As work on LPSDR continues, these findings may be revised to make use of additional rich data, so interim updates should be understood in this context.

This triangulation of the captured insights is ongoing. The team have regular scrum downs which are complimented with both operational and strategic meetings. Conscious that the significant existing organisational knowledge is held by SIE, the team has sought access to several of the key data sources. The review of these documents and databases is time consuming so the support of SIE is vital in fully understanding what information we have that supports their knowledge or otherwise.

The approach is designed to provide a robust evidence base thereby informing the operating model for Local Policing. It would be premature to draw conclusions until we have fully defined our understanding from the Discovery phase. However, are beginning to map out the current operating model and where we have indicative views of the Target Operating Model. In addition to this we are also mapping out the officer numbers, estate, vehicles and processes to understand our service delivery capacity and capability within each division. Our aim is to establish this methodology, so in time it is able to be applied across all 13 Local Policing Divisions.

Researcher Reflections

The research team have enjoyed talking to participants and giving people a voice. They have also been surprised by the insights and themes that are emerging. Research teams in both divisions have also been learning from each other, sharing ideas and practices.

Ian and Paul, two of the officers who have become researchers, describe their experience below:

“After 26 years in the police, our recent introduction to Service Design has challenged many of the things I just accepted or took for granted within Police Scotland. Whilst the intricacies of Service Design can be complex, the core principles are relatively straight forward and mostly just common sense. I now see things every day that could be improved if they were thought out from the perspective of a smooth and efficient user journey rather than the traditional top down approach we have traditionally used.”

“It has been an eye opener to work in the LPSDR; even with 20 plus years of service, we are learning new things about local policing which we can use to provide a better service to the public.”

Communications

Effective communication continues to play a vital role in the delivery of the LPSDR. The SRO and support team have continued engagement with both the Force Executive and wider organisation through a range of platforms.

The focus and development of our communication plan also focuses on our wider external engagement and communications with a number of key partners and stakeholders. This includes Local Authorities (inc COSLA/SOLACE), HMICS and other strategic dependents. These communication lines will continue to be maintained and strengthened throughout the development of the LPSDR work.

Timeline

The indicative timeline for the initial discovery work was agreed with both Divisions to support the delivery of User Research within each Division based on their needs and anticipated demands. It has proved challenging to engage in the discovery work, whilst divisional officers are rightly focused on providing excellent services to their communities. One of LPSDR’s key pledges at the outset of the work was that we would not interfere with operational delivery and the user research team have shown significant flexibility to ensure this remains the case.

The following diagram provides a refreshed timeline in relation to the anticipated dates for delivery of several of the products planned over the coming months.

LPSDR have experienced recruitment challenges within SI&E and Service Design due to a challenging labour market at present. However, these challenges were foreseen and mitigated against in our risk registers.

This timeline follows on from the completion of the User Research within both C and N Divisions and enables the first product to be presented to the Force Executive by October 2023. This product will include the current operating models within both Forth Valley and Highland and Islands Divisions with focus around their resourcing and culture. It will also provide a robust evidence base to enable the executive to prioritise key change activity within Local Policing and inform decision making regarding the future operating model with Forth Valley and Highland and Islands Division.