Hertfordshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner David Lloyd has defended the performance of Hertfordshire Constabulary, in the wake of an inspection by HM Inspector of Constabularies and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS).

Earlier this year HMICFRS published a report into Hertfordshire Constabulary based around nine areas of policing.

According to the report, the force was ‘good’ in two areas, ‘adequate’ in five and ‘requires improvement’ in another. No graded judgement is made in the final area.

But at a meeting of the county council’s public health and community safety cabinet panel on Friday (May 12), Mr Lloyd highlighted changes to the inspectorate’s grading categories.

Whereas in the past there were four categories – ‘outstanding’, ‘good’, ‘requires improvement’ and ‘inadequate’ – he said, there is now an additional ‘adequate’ category.

He suggested that most forces now fall in the new middle ranking category of ‘adequate’.

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Mr Lloyd added that while that meant policing may appear to be performing in a way that ‘sounds worse’ – that was not the case.

“The graded categories have been expanded now to include a middle ranking,” he told county councillors. “The middle ranking is called adequate.

“Where forces are performing to the standard that would have previously been graded as ‘good’ they are now being graded as ‘adequate’.

“And where the previous grading was ‘outstanding’ that same performance will be graded as ‘good’.

“On the face of it that means that policing as a whole appears to be performing in a way which sounds worse than in previous rounds of inspections. And that has certainly been the tenor of recent media coverage.

“But that is not the case – it’s simply a facet of the new inspection grading arrangements.”

Commenting on the findings of the Hertfordshire inspection, he said: “I am pleased we had a positive inspection.”

He noted that the constabulary had been graded ‘good’ in  preventing crime and its treatment of the public –  and ‘adequate’ in investigating crime, protecting vulnerable people, managing offenders, developing a positive workplace and good use of resources.

He highlighted that it had been graded as  ‘requires improvement’ in responding to the public, which he said related largely to the performance in the force control room, which he said all forces had found most challenging to achieve a good grading.

He reported that the force had already been aware of most most issues that had impacted on grading – with, he said, improvements already implemented in key areas prior to the publication of the inspection in February.

The changes to the graded judgements in the inspections – referenced by Mr Lloyd at the meeting – are also highlighted within the HMICFRS report.

The report acknowledges the expansion of the previous ‘four-tier’ system of judgement to ‘five tier’ in the ‘police efficiency, effectiveness and legitimacy’ (PEEL) with inspections.

And it states: “As a result, we can state more precisely where we consider improvement is needed and highlight more effectively the best ways of doing things.

“However, these changes mean that it isn’t possible to make direct comparisons between the grades awarded in this round of PEEL inspections with those from previous years.

“A reduction in grade, particularly from good to adequate, doesn’t necessarily mean that there has been a reduction in performance, unless we say so in the report.”