Sussex Police Organisational Development Department
The report of the Sussex Police Authority Complaints Committee on its meeting of 9th May 2007 includes the following:
DIRECTION AND CONTROL COMPLAINTS
6.1 The Committee received an update on the issues that have generated direction and control complaints. These complaints are recorded as a requirement under the Police Reform Act 2002 . . . .
6.2 During the period March 2007 to May 2007, only two direction and control complaints were recorded which related to general policing standards and operational policing policy respectively. The Committee has discussed whether the low number of complaints recorded suggests a potential lack of awareness amongst staff of the need to record these complaints . . . . The process for recording such complaints is still in the early stages. However, Sussex remains ahead of most other Forces in the recording of direction and control complaints.
ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT MEETING
7.1 Organisational Development Department (ODM) remains the primary conduit for addressing issues that arise from direction and control complaints.
I was interested in this because of difficulties I experienced in trying to register complaints with Sussex Police. I intend to look back over my correspondence with Sussex Police to see how far I could have been aware of the existence of this oddly-acronymed department, and how I can contact it.
The question of different classes of complaint was first drawn to my attention in a letter dated 11 August 2005, from DI Preddy of the Sussex Police Professional Standards Department. I had filed eight complaints about the police on a Witness Statement form. DI Preddy was going to investigate some of those complaints:
Having read your statement I think it pertinent to point out that my role within Sussex Police is to investigate allegations of breaches of the Police Misconduct Code.
This being the case, I cannot investigate perceptional issues such as 'wilful blindness' or 'gross prejudice' however serious you consider them to be.
The examples of issues outside DI Preddy's remit were very poorly chosen. The Police (Conduct) Regulations 2004 Code of Conduct lists what is expected of police officers under twelve subheadings. The first two subheadings are "Honesty and integrity" and "Fairness and impartiality". It is clear however that DI Preddy is seeking to limit the extent of his investigation, and the Complaints Committee statement 7.1 above suggests that he may have had justification for not dealing with direction and control complaints if he did not belong to the ODM.
On 5th September 2005 I wrote to Chief Constable K. Jones. The letter said, 'I wish to know who else Sussex Police can depute to consider the "perceptional issues" that DI Preddy claims he cannot examine.'
That letter was answered on 8th September by DI Preddy, because my letter had been passed to him. He simply ignored my request for information.
The Sussex Police website page on Complaint procedures does not distinguish between different categories of complaint. A search of the site is futile: Organisational Development in the Search text box produces the phrase No results found, as does ODM.
So this has been a very brief and unproductive investigation. Five years after the 2002 Act came into force, Sussex Police's management of its requirement was "still in its early stages", and yet the Committee's report declares that "Sussex remains ahead of most other Forces in the recording of direction and control complaints." Is there any evidence for that extraordinary claim, or is it a barefaced lie?
