Views on PEEL Assessments

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) consulted on a new approach to inspecting police forces, called the PEEL Assessments. The assessments will see all 43 forces in England and Wales receive two to three systematic inspections a year. PEEL stands for Police Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Legitimacy and it is these aspects of each force that HMIC seeks to inspect. In order to ensure that a wide range of stakeholders is consulted, HMIC commissioned Ipsos to conduct research with frontline police officers and police staff and the public.

Ipsos interviewed a nationally representative sample of 1,804 members of the general public in England and Wales using a face-to-face general public omnibus survey, and these findings provide an overview of the public’s immediate response to the proposal for the PEEL Assessments. To allow HMIC’s proposed approach to be presented and discussed in more detail; five evening workshop events were held with members of the general public.

Victims of certain types of crime were also interviewed separately to gain their views on the service they received from the police. Findings from this particular element of the study are included in Chapter 8 of this report.

Interviews with police officers and staff were also conducted across five police forces in order to hear the views of those working on the frontline. Frontline officers included constables, police community support officers and sergeants. Frontline staff included control room staff, crime scene investigators, call operators and detention officers, among others. Where this report describes the views of 'the police' this should be understood to be referring to an aggregation of the views of both these frontline officers and staff.