New police chief lays down the law

Chris Sims is a man who knows the dangers of tripping over red tape.

The 49-year-old, who joined the Met in 1980 before rising through the ranks, has moved from Staffordshire police which was thrust into the limelight when a Pc, who went by the name David Copperfield, from that force penned an explosive diary, called Wasting Police Time, of the "treacly bureaucracy" that hampers the modern day copper.

Paperwork includes a "stop and account" form, which can take officers up to seven minutes to complete once they have spoken to someone stopped in the street.

Officials estimate scrapping some forms would save between four and six million hours of police time, equivalent to between between 2,000 and 3,000 full-time officers.

And Pc Copperfield's tales of hours spent dealing with neighbour disputes as crimes, form-filling and performance target chasing could be drawing to an end, if Mr Sims has his way.

"Now is the time that we begin to move away from that notion of performance and we put public confidence at the centre of what we do," he tells the Express & Star.

"I think that's going to be quite a significant change for the force. I think the whole of the public sector for a period became too focused on it (performance).

"It's certainly not a criticism of West Midlands Police, it was much wider than that. I think the pendulum swung too far and people began to pursue statistical performance as an end in itself. For a period of time I think we lost a view of what good policing is. We've got to get back to a stage of understanding that good policing is – meeting and impressing customers and providing the protection that people need."

Pc Copperfield, the pen name which Staffordshire officer Stuart Davidson used to write Wasting Police Time, listed "World of Pens" and "More Pens", under his police equipment website.

But reducing the paperwork faced by today's officers is only half of the battle, according to Mr Sims.

"I want to create more freedom for frontline staff. People join policing because it's a vocation and they want to make a difference. I firmly believe that the thing that will drive good service is giving people the sort of headroom to make good decisions and use their professional judgment.

"Bureaucracy is bigger than just paperwork, it's really a mindset of how constrained we make frontline activity. It's an issue right across the public sector. I do think it's within our power to do something about it. It's about creating the time for people to serve the public better and a mindset that sort of goes in unencumbered and proper judgment to give proper, good service.

"There's plenty of evidence to show that by giving good, professional judgment to officers you reduce their need to write lots and lots and lots on every single crime and instead focus them on service and investigation.

"The target is about making people feel that West Midlands Police is out there both to serve them and to protect them.

"Is that going to be tangible on day one? I don't suppose it is. But in the longer term I want to improve the service, tailor the service to the needs of individuals. At the moment we're a big mass supplier rather than a tailored responder.

"For example, young people are the most vulnerable part of society. You're more likely to be a victim of crime as a young person and yet I think the police service over many years has not thought through clearly how you serve young people as victims. Young people don't want to receive letters from us updating them. They would prefer texts."

Mr Sims takes over a force which says crime is at its lowest level in almost two decades. Latest figures show total crime in the region, which includes the four Black Country boroughs, Birmingham and Coventry, dropped from 247,924 to 227,743, a fall of 8.1 per cent.

House burglary in the West Midlands is at its lowest for 29 years while car crime has seen a year-on-year reduction of almost nine per cent. A six per cent reduction in business crime was achieved, equating to 3,000 fewer victims.

But could the current economic crisis derail that progress.

"These are challenging times for families and people," admits Mr Sims.

"Maintaining the sort of crime reduction that we've achieved over the last seven or eight years will get more difficult inevitably. There's enough evidence from previous recessions to link economic activity and acquisitive crime.

"Having said that each recession is different and I think we can continue to reduce crime, but it will inevitably get harder and we will need to work harder. We're very sound financially. But I think it doesn't take a genius to see that for the public services, the next few years is going to a period where funding does become much tighter.

"A big part of my job is to prepare us for that period and to make sure that as funding gets more difficult that the decisions on making economies are made not on the front end of service but at the back so that we use this time to prepare for a period where probably our funding is less and we work to simplify the organisation and make the sort of savings needed in ways that don't impact on front line services. I think we can do that. I think we can meet the spending needs and continue to provide a better and better service."

Pressed on how certain he was that the West Midlands would not see a cut in front line officers, Mr Sims says: "The only certainty is that I'm going to do everything I can to prevent that happening."