Sussex Police Authority

Most Sussex residents who know anything about the Sussex Police Authority will probably have learned it from the annual eight-page tabloid publication, calling itself an "annual report" and a "newspaper", published jointly, at our expense, by Sussex Police Authority and the Chief Constable of Sussex. Sussex schools and Sussex hospitals of course do not need such a publication, and promote themselves simply by the service they provide to the public.

This is not the place to examine all eight pages of self-advertisement provided by this publication, but as I have to hand the last two editions of the paper, and as Page 2 of each of them is devoted to Sussex Police Authority, this is where I will start my examination of the body which "oversees Sussex police."

The 2003-04 edition
Page 2 starts with a large heading, "ACTING ON YOUR AUTHORITY", followed by an even larger heading, "Independent, well informed". There follows the main feature on the page, comments by the Chairman (Mr Mark Dunn) on the work of the Authority, during which he tells us, "My father was the first commandant of Bramshill, the police training college. So between the ages of seven and 18 I met hundreds of his police officer colleagues and I was steeped in police lore in my formative years." One wonders why this was not a disqualification for the post of Chairman, as incompatible with the independence which the Authority is supposed to display.

The Authority claim to be "acting on your authority". I take authority in this phrase to mean the authority of the people of Sussex, not the authority of the Authority. So the people of Sussex supposedly delegated power to this body which claims that it "represents the views of the public on policing". To find out how this body is made up one can turn to the 2004-05 edition of the paper. The seventeen members of the Authority comprise nine elected councillors, three magistrates, and five independent members. So if at a particular meeting of the Authority all nine councillors are present, then our elected representatives would be in the majority. Who decided that the eight unelected authoritarians should be given the power of the people is not specified. Whether a quorum would require a majority of elected members I doubt.

How does this independent body, which claims to represent the views of the public, find out what those views are? They arrange occasional meetings which Sussex residents are allowed to attend "to have their say about their priorities for policing their communities". I will comment on this when I have attended one of these meetings.

Mr Dunn's opening remark on Page 2 states, "Our job is to ensure that Sussex Police is accountable to the people of Sussex." Mr Dunn claims that the Authority "have really robust conversations" with the police so that "we can thrash things out". I hope to examine minutes of meetings for any evidence of anything other than a cosy relationship between Authority and Sussex Police.

The 2004-05 edition
The headline "Acting on your behalf" is more modest this time, and the Chairman delivers the obligatory upbeat message with the sort of platitudes that the occasion encourages. One subheading proclaims, "We promote crime and disorder reduction". Really? So that's what the police are for!

The concerns I have about Sussex Police are not addressed in these two papers. My own experience of the police reflects the disquiet expressed in Politeia's publication of November last, which criticised low entry standards, inadequate training, and poor leadership. To these I have to add, from my own experience, a surprising level of dishonesty in my local police force and in the central Professional Standards Department.

The Sussex Police Authority has a website, which publishes details of some of its meetings, which should provide more insights into what the Authority actually does.

From the website I found out the likely reason why, when on the advice of the Independent Police Complaints Commission I wrote to the Authority to complain of malpractice by the police, the complaints were simply passed on to the local police commander, who did not answer or even acknowledge them.

The Authority has a Complaints Committee, on which members of the Authority are appointed to serve. Whether these are elected or not elected by Sussex residents is not specified on the web page devoted to committees. The Authority states that under section 77 of the Police Act 1996 it is required "to keep itself informed as to the manner in which complaints from members of the public against members of the Force are dealt with by the Chief Constable."

What section 77 actually says is, "Every police authority in carrying out its duty with respect to the maintenance of an efficient and effective police force . . . shall keep themselves informed as to the working of sections 67 to 76 in relation to the force." Sections 67 to 76 are concerned with the handling of complaints by the police. So the Complaints Committee in this respect is rather a Handling of Complaints Committee, which can say that its job is "To inspect the record of complaints and completed action taken upon them."

This could be a main reason why it is so difficult to have a complaint recorded by Sussex Police. If complaints are not on the record, they are inaccessible to the Authority which is supposed to monitor the way they are handled.

My examination of the website proved to be briefer than expected. From the home page of Sussex Police Authority one can choose Authority Meetings from the frame on the left. I selected a meeting listed as 16 February 2006 County Hall, Chichester, and from its page was able to access the minutes of the previous meeting, held on 15 December 2005.

The minutes started with a list of seventeen people who were present, sixteen of whom were listed in the Policing Sussex paper, 2004-05. The seventeenth was welcomed to his first meeting by the Chairman.

The Chairman also welcomed several people who were not listed as present, two of whom worked for the Authority, one of whom represented Unison, one of whom represented the Superintendents' Association, and one of whom represented "Police Federation". Whether these people were in the audience or whether they participated in the proceedings is not specified.

A glance through the minutes was sufficient to decide that combing through further sets of minutes for any sign of "robust conversations" and thrashing things out would in all likelihood be futile. No individual voice is discernible. The Authority resolved this, the Authority considered that, the Authority expressed concern about the other.

My own particular concern, the disgraceful way in which Sussex Police treat complaints from the public, is dealt with in three short paragraphs:

153. The Police Authority considered the report of the Complaints Committee's meeting held on 9 November, 2005.
154. The Chairman of the Committee updated the Authority on the latest position regarding the inspection by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary of the Sussex Police Professional Standards Department. The report on this inspection was awaited.
155. Resolved – that the report be noted.

Wishing to know more, I looked for minutes of the Complaints Committee's meeting, but failed to find them.

When the Sussex Police Authority met again on 7th April 2006, I was able to see and hear (apart from one speech, when Mr Tidy's microphone was not switched on) the public part of the proceedings. Present were one lord lieutenant, one vice-lord lieutenant, three deputy lieutenants, one high sheriff, one representative of the Police Federation, two representatives of the Superintendents' Assocation, one person from Unison, the Chief Constable and two or three other police officers, two of whom were there to accept presentations, and a third (unidentified, but probably a policeman) there to take photographs of the presentations.

The Sussex Police Authority members were also present, apart from the three who were not.

The major item on the agenda was the Home Secretary's proposal to merge the Surrey and Sussex police forces, which the Sussex Authority are rejecting as they prefer "federal" relations with other police forces. Mr Dunn thought that the Home Secretary should be made to "delve more deeply into his intellect to justify his actions", though less than three weeks before the Chairman of the SPA had been at a meeting at which Mr Clarke had said that his choice was "based on the advice which he had received from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC)".

Another representative of the people of West Sussex, Mr Mortimer, was also opposed to the Home Secretary's proposal, of which he said, "it's been connived in some little steamy hole in Whitehall with half a dozen people smoking fags". He added, "The Home Secretary is not God."

The opposition of the Authority to the Home Office decision will delay its implementation for a year.

Currently, my primary interest is in Sussex Police's treatment of complaints by members of the public, so I was particularly interested in Item 7 on the agenda, "Report of the Complaints Committee." The East Sussex county councillor - the Chairman of the Complaints Committee - who should have "moved" this report not being present, the Clerk was asked to do so.

I would have thought the Clerk to be a paid employee there to facilitate the work of the Authority while remaining neutral. Whether he was speaking for himself or the Committee was not entirely clear to me, though he did seem to be speaking for himself when, referring to the HMIC's shoddy report of January 2006 on the Professional Standards Department of Sussex Police, he said: "It's quite clear that we are one of the best police forces in the country with regard to the way in which we deal with professional standards and it seems a bit of a quirk of the marking scheme that we didn't actually end up with an Excellent."

How Dr Godfrey deduced this from the report defeats me, and in any case, members of the Authority should be making up their own minds about what the report said. I was hoping to hear something about the Committee's discussion of the contents of the complaints registers, but what followed on this item of the agenda was little else but an encomium read by Mrs Turner on the chief superintendent in charge of the professional standards department. Complaints by members of the public were not mentioned.

As regards my investigation into the reasons for the lousy quality of policing in South Wealden, I think that the SPA are part of the problem rather than a help in finding the truth.

Having decided that I should make an effort to find the report which had been accepted as Item 7 on the agenda, I went to the SPA's website home page and typed "complaints committee" and "complaints committee 2006" into the search text box. On each occasion this linked to ten pages which together listed one hundred files in portable document format. The titles of these files were not always accurate, and as many of them were called "Agenda Item", and were not principally about the Complaints Committee, it was necessary to download files one after another in the hope of finding the one I wanted. The April 2006 file I wanted proved to be the twenty-fifth file I downloaded, and it had a small clue to its nature in its name as it was called "agenda7.pdf".

I am now in a position to compare Dr Godfrey's contribution to Item 7 with the report itself, and to compare both with the Baseline Assessment to which they refer.

The report produced by Mr Rogers on the Complaints Committee meeting of 1st March 2006 has as its first item "HMIC Baseline Assessment of Professional Standards". It starts,
"2.1 Sussex Police was graded `Good`, the highest grade awarded by HMIC in individual force performance."

It is true that the HMIC report of professional standards graded Sussex Police as ‘Good’, but the report does not say that ‘Good’ was the highest grade awarded by HMIC.

Mr Rogers continues,
"2.2 In publishing the report HM Inspector Mrs Jane Stichbury stated that while there were no forces graded as `Excellent`, it was encouraging that several forces were very close indeed to achieving the top grade. There were five forces, including Sussex, where the performance across the board was very close to achieving the highest grade of `Excellent`."

Nothing in Mr Rogers' paragraph 2.2 is actually in the HMIC report. So of the six dozen words in these two keynote paragraphs, only five relate to the report itself. What is the basis for the claim that Mrs Stichbury said this or that I do not know. Whether she wrote the report herself I doubt. Whether she had even read it I do not know.

What I do know is that judging by my own experience of the Professional Standards Department of Sussex Police, it is very unlikely that ranked with the other forces in England and Wales, the Sussex department would be among the five best.

Fortunately, it should be easy to check this by looking at the reports on the other forces, but unfortunately when I tried to do this, though the reports are listed on the HMIC website, the links to the reports themselves were broken. I emailed HMIC to inform it of the fault. [P.S. I had given up after trying the first six, not knowing that a fourteenth attempt would have started to bring success.]

Meanwhile, I will have to look at the matter from a largely theoretical standpoint.

When grading an activity requires a subjective element, so that a mark cannot be given simply on the basis of percentage right or wrong, or number of say ten things present or absent, the problem of selecting criteria for judgement is greater, and can be aggravated by the fact that any grade awarded reflects on the awarder as well as the awardee, and the effect on any larger target audience of the award cannot be neglected.

So for instance, if a teacher is commenting on the English essays of slow learners, Good and Very Good might be sufficient if he or she really wanted to distinguish between the quality of work of different pupils. For a top stream class in a grammar school, one might want to use a greater range: Excellent, Very Good, Good, Satisfactory, Fair, Poor, Unsatisfactory, See Me.

What does one do if one has to grade a large number of people whose livelihood depends on what they are doing and who cost the public, in the case of Sussex, nearly a quarter of a billion pounds a year? Could one say they are rubbish, particularly if one were the inspector responsible for the quality of policing, and subordinate to a politician who is answerable to the taxpayer?

HMIC's approach "consists of a self-assessment process [regrettable] supported by visits to forces for validation and quality assurance", on the basis of which a department is rated as Excellent, Good, Fair, or Poor.

HMIC's brief comment on the meaning of these terms raises problems: "Grades of Fair, Good and Excellent all represent acceptable performance levels but indicate the degree to which the force has met the grading criteria. An Excellent grade indicates ‘benchmark’ performance including significant implementation of good practice."

For me, Excellent means outstandingly good, Good means thoroughly commendable but not outstanding, Satisfactory [not featuring on the HMIC scale] means acceptable, Fair is a term of faint praise meaning substandard but not bad enough to be condemned, and Poor means unacceptably weak.

HMIC, choosing to have no grade of Satisfactory, claims that Fair is "acceptable". I would disagree, and think that HMIC would be reluctant to grade a department as only Fair. I do not think that HMIC would seriously consider ranking a department as Poor. And I assume that HMIC's explanation of Excellent does not mean that forces which were only graded as Good did not display "significant implementation of good practice".

Should the actual reports become available to me, I shall be able to check on the grades awarded across England and Wales, and relate that to what Mr Rogers wrote and what Dr Godfrey said in the SPA meeting.

21/04/06: An email from HMIC having prompted me to try the links on their website again, I found that all forty-five reports on police forces' professional standards are now readily available to the public. The gradings are at variance with my own preconceptions about them: they would seem to endorse HMIC's stated view that FAIR is "acceptable", and unfortunately the POOR grade has had to be used.

The totals of grades awarded are as follows:
EXCELLENT: none
GOOD: twenty-four
FAIR: nineteen
POOR: two

So the HMIC report found Professional Standards in Sussex to be GOOD. According to Mr Rogers that GOOD was "very close to" EXCELLENT. My own view of Professional Standards in Sussex, based on the dishonest report that it produced on my complaints about Sussex Police, is that the Department is POOR. The PSD report is reproduced here, and my report on it can be found here.

I shall not take it upon myself to enquire into how my perception of Sussex PSD reflects on the less than GOOD grades awarded to some other forces, but I do expect that I shall enquire further into the workings of Sussex Police Authority and its Complaints Committee.

I started by looking at Mr Rogers' paragraph 2.3 of the report on the Complaints Committee meeting of 1st March 2006 which starts, "The baseline assessment report contains two recommendations. With regard to recommendation one, the Sussex Police Internet site now includes, in a more prominent position, details about making a complaint. The Force is considering recommendation two, regarding measuring the satisfaction of complainants . . . ."

So according to Mr Rogers, Sussex Police have actually acted on one of the recommendations made in HMIC's January report.

Recommendation 1 is: "Her Majesty's Inspector recommends that the Force should enhance its Internet site to include details about the complaint procedure, how to make a complaint and the roles of the Force, the Police Authority and the IPCC."

I have just (21/04/06) checked the http://www.sussex.police.uk/ website. The word "complaints" does not appear on the home page.

One can access a page displaying a site map, with seventy-five items under fifteen sub-headings, but again, the word "complaints" does not appear.

I typed "complaints" in a search text box on the home page. This produced seventy-six results spread over eight pages. Not being willing to read all that, I tried " 'making a complaint' ". Result: No results found.

I tried the same phrase without the inverted commas. Result: 17 results found containing all search terms. 237 results found containing some search terms. 26 pages of results. A quick look over the first page discovered nothing relevant to my search.

I returned to the home page and selected "Information Service", and its subheading "Information Centre" and its subheading "A-Z Information". "Complaints" was not listed under the letters of the alphabet, but when I typed "complaints" into a Quick Search text box, at the top of the resulting list appeared what I was looking for:

"Complaints
"Complaints against Sussex Police policies or procedures should be made in writing to: The Chief Constable, Sussex Police Headquarters, Malling House, Church Lane, Lewes, BN7 2DZ.

"If you wish to make a complaint about a member of staff, please contact Sussex Police via telephone on 0845 60 70 999. People with hearing or speech difficulties can use a text phone on our Minicom number 01273 483435.

"The Independent Police Complaints Committee has overall responsibility for the system for complaints against the police. For further information, visit the Committee's website."

A footnote says, "This page was last updated: 27/05/2004". I suppose the last paragraph is referring to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

23rd April: Today I came across a more informative and evidently more recent complaints page by using a 'Contact Us' link on the home page. As one item of its submenu it has 'Make a complaint', which leads to a page called "Complaint procedures". This explains who can complain and how, and says that "all complaints, by law, must be recorded by the police force itself." What 'recording' entails is not explained. The IPCC is twice referred to as a 'Committee'. This page did not appear "in a more prominent position" as far as I was concerned. HMIC's recommendation that details about the role of the Police Authority should be included has not been followed.

25th April: I attended an evening meeting in Willingdon arranged by the Sussex Police Authority. It was designed to start at 7 pm, with three presentations by speakers in the first hour, to be followed by "focus group discussions". The meeting was to finish by 9 pm.

Much work had evidently gone into the planning of the meeting, and there was great support from the police - I counted a dozen officers present, several in senior positions, including an assistant chief constable, and these were not only very approachable, but took the initiative themselves in speaking to individual members of the public. It is regrettable, therefore, that attendance by the public was very poor. Perhaps local newspapers should do more to encourage public involvement in such meetings, and perhaps secondary schools could help.

The meeting was led by a local councillor who is a member of the East Sussex Council and of the Sussex Police Authority. He gave the Authority's overview of improving standards in policing, and looked to the future and the proposed restructuring of the Sussex and Surrey forces. That presentation was followed by that of the Chairman of the Safer Wealden Partnership, who explained the role of her agency and the way it is linked with the police, with councils, and with other key agencies, in coordinating efforts to reduce crime and make Wealden a safer place. One can see and hear one's county councillors through the very good webcasts of Police Authority meetings, and the even better webcasts of East Sussex County Council meetings (these have a list of Index Points which enable one to select individual contributions very easily); but this meeting was for me a unique opportunity to see and hear the chief police inspector who is the recently-appointed commander for the local district.

The Chief Inspector began with statistics reflecting the achievements since last year, calling attention to the weaker points as well as the strengths, and then gave an insider's view of a wide range of police activities from strategies for tackling burglary and speeding to the more mundane problems of transport for PCSO's in rural areas.

As the presentations finished at 7.53, a few minutes were allowed for questions before the focus groups began work. The Authority spokesperson had said at the beginning of the meeting, "We are listening", and the atmosphere in the room was conducive to that. Though what I had to say was critical of the police, I felt comfortable in saying what I wanted to.

The focus groups were the least successful part of the meeting, perhaps on account the poor attendance, and the problem of collecting groups with a common interest, though I am not sure that the Authority really want to hear any sort of views on the police, rather than one's priorities among the many tasks facing a force with limited resources.

I think the truth was told by the police officer who during focus group time said to me that the Authority do not deal with individual cases. That certainly is the impression given by reading Complaints Committee reports, which are concerned with percentages, with rising and falling figures. The quality of policing that an individual experiences is evidently not the concern of the Authority, so that my view that policing in Wealden has been lousy, that four of the five police officers involved closely with my problems are dishonest, and that my expressed view is that two of them are not fit to be police officers, is of no account to them.

The Authority monitors complaints with reference to complaints registers. The police are supposed to put complaints from members of the public in the complaints registers, so that they can be monitored. If a complainant asks Sussex Police whether his or her complaint has been added to a complaints register, the answer is, "you can complete the relevant Subject Access form. Payment of a £10.00 fee and proof of identification and address must accompany a completed application form . . . Please note that once your completed application has been received in our Data Protection Unit, the process to decide upon and to provide you with information can take up to 40 days." After I had paid my £10, I was not told anything about registration of my complaints. The registers monitored by the Authority are quite likely to contain only a subset of complaints actually made to the police.

This may well be the end of my study of the Authority and its Complaints Committee.

August 2006: The annual newspaper published by the SPA and Sussex Police for 2005-2006 having recently arrived, and my complaints about Sussex Police being still ongoing, I picked on a couple of the more misleading items in the newspaper as the basis for a letter to a local newspaper. A good deal of somewhat tedious detail was necessary in order to correct the impression given by one of the items, a performance table, in spite of which the Eastbourne Herald printed the letter in its edition of Friday, August 18, 2006, under the heading "How the local police is rated".

On August 30th, the Eastbourne Gazette printed my letter under the heading, "Is publication completely true?" One hopes that a few people may as a result be a little more knowledgeable about how their police force serves them, as one cause of the poor quality of policing must be people's lack of informed interest. After the public meeting on 25th April (see above), I recorded that attendance was "very poor". I subsequently read in the official report on the event: "This meeting was attended by 15 members of the public."

1st September 2006: I am still retrieving computer files which the police had apparently tried to destroy after they seized my computers in August 2004. As the files included email correspondence with the SPA, I shall be collecting together the text of the emails on another page.

The Sussex Police Authority met again on 19th October 2006. As my particular interest is the way in which complaints against the police are monitored by the Authority, the agenda, which did not include a report from the Complaints Committee, had little of interest, except a comic (to me) and quite revealing coda, an impromptu addition to the published agenda involving complaints by members of the Authority.

I found this comic because my own latest complaints about Sussex Police seem to be faced with stonewalling. Though one is told that by law the police have to record complaints from the public, the police have refused to record my latest complaints. An appeal to the IPCC more than seven weeks ago about the refusal has not met with a reply, and a complaint emailed to the Home Secretary more than a week ago about "dilatory practice on the part of the IPCC" has elicited no response as yet.

At the end of the public part of the Authority meeting, the chairman's concluding remarks were interrupted by Mrs Carole Shaves, who wished to complain about the IPCC's behaviour. This is what Mrs Shaves said:

"Most members will know that we are coming up to the anniversary of the car crash that happened in Hastings . . . the IPCC were involved . . . they have come back with a report . . . which has been given to the families but which we as an Authority have not been allowed to see and I think that is an absolutely disgraceful situation. How can we possibly be ambassadors for the force if we have absolutely no idea what is in this report and we have no idea when we're going to get it? The IPCC have not agreed that we should have a copy of this, so perhaps I can pass it over to Joe."

The report concerns the death of five teenagers, aged 14 to 17, in a car crash. The car was stolen. A police car attended the scene shortly after the crash. A BBC News online report includes the sentences, "The accident happened at 0142 BST on Battle Road, St Leonards, shortly after the stolen Metro is believed to have struck a cyclist. Police officers in a marked vehicle had spotted the Metro two minutes before the crash."

If the police officers had been told of the collision with the cyclist, whether the report was true or not, then they would have had a compelling reason to take action, which would not necessarily have included a car chase. The BBC account continues, "The force has refused to say if there was a police chase." Make what you like of that. At least they're not lying on this occasion.

Few would disagree with the idea that the parents of the dead teenagers should have been given copies of the IPCC's report on the accident as soon as practicable. Why should the Authority receive a copy? Mrs Shaves thinks that they should because they are "ambassadors for the force" !

An ambassador is a person sent to a foreign country in order to further the interests of his or her own country. The function of members of the Authority is to serve the public, not to patronise them or follow an agenda set by the police. According to the Police Act 1996, Chapter 16, 6. - (1), the Authority is required to "secure the maintenance of an efficient and effective police force for its area."

I find it odd that Mrs Shaves wants to pass the problem over to the chief constable, who is not responsible for the work of the IPCC, which is a quasi-independent body. It handles appeals from the public when individuals are dissatisfied with the way in which their complaints have been dealt with by their local police and police authority, but is also responsible for investigating the most serious complaints against the police, of the sort for instance which attract discussion in the national media.

Available online is the Home Office publication, Deaths During or Following Police Contact, which records that "during or following police contact from 1 April 2003 to 31 March 2004, 100 deaths occurred." The report divides the deaths into four categories. In Category 1, "38 were as a result of fatal road traffic incidents involving the police." Injuries of course were far higher. On 8 August 2005 the IPCC published a press release saying that they were reviewing police road traffic incidents, with the aim of submitting a report to Parliament after 18 months.

Seen in the context of annual statistics, the deaths of five teenagers in a single accident could well be the outstandingly tragic incident in the survey. It is of great importance that the truth of what happened should, as far as practicable, be discovered, for the sake of the police - if they are innocent - as well as the public. Unfortunately, if the police were at all blameworthy, concealing the truth could be in their short-term interest.

Why is Mrs Shaves so keen to intervene in the enquiry at this stage?

The Clerk thought this "a matter of great concern" and had written to the IPCC about it.

The Chief Constable could see no reason why the Authority should not see the report. He said that had spoken to Nick Hardwick [the Chair of the IPCC] that morning, and asked the members "to be patient for a little bit longer" because the issue was "wrapped up in the resolution of both the IPCC inquiry and I think allied to that the inquest into the deaths of the young people".

Mrs Shaves found it very difficult to be patient, because "we've got a press who are quite prepared to stir things up where they can." Luckily "it's only one family that's been causing problems", and they were "very lucky so far that the report hasn't caused too much problem and that the families haven't gone to the press with it."

I find Mrs Shaves' attitudes absolutely disgraceful and a matter of great concern. Her view of the role of the media would suit a totalitarian political regime. Many newspapers, with good reason, have had cause to look critically at the role of the police. This website looks briefly at two television reports on scandalous behaviour by police officers, which had presumably been allowed by ignorant and complacent police authorities.

From my own experience I know that there are dishonest police officers, and that there are many other police officers who will cover up for that dishonesty. I know that sometimes police drivers grossly exceed speed limits, sometimes recklessly, and that the public have an interest in monitoring exactly what is going on in our name. We have to rely on the mass media for this.

In response to Mrs Shaves' second contribution, the Chair thought the members were in "a highly unsatisfactory position". The Chief Constable however, seemed somewhat reassuring: he said that the IPCC "have sensitised the issue of the report unnecessarily because the content of the report when it becomes public will not - you know - it will desensitise that issue".

Mr Dunn was not reassured. He asked, "Suppose there had been a substantial issue in that report. What would our position be if we weren't aware of it? . . . Could we FOI them?"

Presumably the death of five teenagers is not a substantial issue, whereas the attachment of blame to a police officer would have been.

The Chair concluded by agreeing that if they did not get their way they would have "to go to some pretty extreme measures including FOI or applying to the courts for redress."

The Chief Constable seemed to be saying that they would not have anything to worry about. I know from my own experience that if they can, the IPCC will ignore any evidence other than that provided by the police. Accounts of my experience of the IPCC are available here and here. As a result of the Authority's interchange on the subject, I have started to take an interest in the IPCC's investigation myself, and to start a page on it.

The Sussex Police Authority met again on 14th December 2006. The Complaints Committee item on the agenda I commented on briefly on my Would You Believe It? web page. Here, my observations will be confined to the Chief Constable's spoken update report, followed by consideration.of paragraph 7 of the written version.

With his customary lax syntax and unstudied elocution the Chief Constable said as follows:

"I just want to start at 7.1 and the reference to HMIC baseline inspection and the reason I do that is that I will never come to this Authority and say I think the force is doing well that's for you to tell me if you think it's so, but I can say that HMIC think the force is doing well so I will. What does that [unrecognised word(s)] look like? As members will see sort of skating through the report, an update on the enhancement roll out of neighbourhood policing an acknowledged strength for Sussex Police an update and an acknowledgement of the work that still needs to be done in contact management, we handle over a million telephone calls for contact per year for Sussex Police and about three-quarters of that volume is the non-emergency stuff so without the investment of this Authority in our call-handling business I don't think we'd be even as good as we are though. The trend is picking up and after the summer sort of depression we start moving up towards the level of quality that we expect. Volume performance which is largely delivered through that side of our business is is looking good and I'm hoping [banging on table] that this is wood and not Formica with crime continuing to fall some categories of crime and some of them the most impacted falling markedly and our ability to get justice for people and bring offenders to justice to detect crimes has never looked better . . . . I do believe that Sussex Police is a force that deals bangs for the taxpayer's buck."

Observations on the foregoing:

1. "I will never come to this Authority and say I think the force is doing well": to test the validity of this statement one can simply listen to the Chief Constable's reports to SPA meetings, or more conveniently, visit another web page where a couple of extracts from an earlier meeting are quoted.

In the remainder of the quotation, I am not always clear what the Chief Constable is saying himself and what he is attributing to HMIC.

2. The Chief Constable seems to be reporting on the HMIC Baseline Assessment for Sussex Police published October 2006. The Chief Constable reports "neighbourhood policing an acknowledged strength for Sussex Police". HMIC changes the wording of the criteria between 2005 and 2006, but as far as one can tell the grades for neighbourhood policing in both years were "GOOD", and the direction of travel in both years "Improved". I do not think that an improving situation equates with "an acknowledged strength".

3. As regards telephone calls, the Chief Constable seems more downbeat. He says that if the Authority did not finance the taking of telephone calls by the police, he doesn't think "we'd be even as good as we are though." If there is any doubt whatever whether the police service would be any worse if they were not able to take telephone calls, the service must be truly execrable.

4. The "summer sort of depression" refers I suppose to the quality of the force's management of telephone contacts, which was one of the categories in the baseline assessments. For 2004-5, "Call Management" was graded "Fair, Improved"; for 2005-6, "Contact Management" was graded "Fair, Stable" (the changed wording of the category not being the sole example of the way in which HMIC in practice undermines its own baseline assessment policy). For 2005-6, one force was graded Poor, Sussex was one of 18 forces graded Fair (nationally below average), 20 forces were graded Good, and 4 were graded Excellent. Ten "areas for improvement" were specified in HMIC's report. Instead of singling out any of these for analysis, the Chief Constable prefers to knock on wood, resort to vague generalities, and hope for the best.

5. The phrase "bangs for the buck" originates in U.S. politics, and refers to relatively cheap firepower or weaponry, or "bombs for one's money". It has unfortunate overtones deriving from the fact that "bang" has been used in sexual senses since the seventeenth century; and it could remind us of the role of the police in shooting people or killing them in road accidents.

Let us turn from this drivel to the more ordered treatment of the HMIC baseline assessment in the written version of the Chief Constable's report.

Despite its shortcomings, the HMIC Baseline Assessment is an important document, so one wonders whether our representatives on the Authority are so idle or so stupid that they rely on the Chief Constable's account for their own understanding of the HMIC report. If so, they may well believe that the report is a completely objective document produced entirely by observers from outside Sussex, and even outside the police service itself.

The HIMC report starts with a warning: "BA is designed primarily as a self-assessment . . . . It is important to recognise that BA is not a traditional inspection." So the assessment of Sussex Police is based on assessment by Sussex police.

Sussex Chief Constable's report on the report starts:

"7.1 Overall, the Force has made improvements on last year's baseline assessment results, with one ‘excellent’, 15 ‘good’, five ‘fair’ and two ‘poor’ grades. The grading criteria have been amended and the performance bar raised from last year's assessment, making it more difficult to achieve ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ grades."

Baseline Assessment started in March 2004, with HMIC reviewing and assessing the work of police forces. The idea was to create a baseline against which future performance could be measured. Unfortunately, HMIC being what it is, the baseline has subsequently been changed, the change not being a simple change of units, like a change from imperial to decimal, but changes to the wording of categories, and changes to which categories are included, which makes the statistical dimension of the reports even less useful than it might otherwise have been.

The Chief Constable claims "improvements" between 2004-5 and 2005-6. For both years, the "Excellent" evidently concerned finance, though it was first called "Resource Management", and subsequently "Managing Financial and Physical Resources", so no change there. In 2004-5 HMIC graded 26 categories, and in 2005-6 only 23, so the Chief Constable's "15 'good' " was 15 out of 23, compared with 15 out of 26 the previous year. The 5 "Fair" grades might seem an improvement on the 10 "Fair" grades of the previous year, but is offset by the change from no "Poor" grades in 2004-5 to two "Poor" grades in 2005-6, for "Human Resource Management" and "Training, Development and Organisational Learning". On balance, I think the Chief Constable's claim about "improvements" could be misleading.

His second sentence I find astonishing: "The grading criteria have been amended and the performance bar raised". I have found nothing in the report to justify such a statement. What was wrong with the criteria that they had to be "amended"? Where are we told that the performance bar was raised between 2004-5 and 2005-6? Surely such a procedure would make nonsense of the baseline model which assesses performance relative to a standard established in 2004? It seems that either there is another document on the subject which I have not seen, or a private letter which I have not read, or "a quiet word on the side" which I have not heard; or the Chief Constable is lying.

The Chief Constable continues:"7.2 The Force also improved its direction of travel to ‘improved’ for fairness and equality, the grade remaining ‘fair’ and the direction of travel for information management improved from ‘stable’ to ‘improved’.

"Fairness and Equality" was graded "Fair" in both reports, but it is true that it has improved from Fair to Fair. "Information Management" does not appear as a category in the earlier report, so the basis for the judgment about improvement must remain a mystery.

CC's report:"7.3 There are three areas where the Force did less well than in last year's assessment: protecting vulnerable people, human resource management and training and development."

Comment: "protecting vulnerable people" fell victim to rearrangement of the baseline. In 2004-5 it comes under the subheading "Investigating Crime", and reads "Investigating Hate Crime and Crimes against Vulnerable Victims - Good - Stable". It reappeared in 2005-6 under the subheading "Promoting Safety", and reads "Protecting Vulnerable People - Fair - Stable. If the two categories have much in common, it is difficult to see how a change from Good to Fair can involve a Stable direction of travel, as it is difficult to see how the Home Office can countenance the expenditure (not investment) of many thousands of pounds on such stuff.

2004-5: "6A Human Resource Management - Fair - Deteriorated"
2005-6: "Human Resource Management - Poor - Stable" !

As regards the last category mentioned in 7.3, the Chief Constable is correct:
   2004-5: "6B Training and Development - Fair - Improving"
   2005-6: "Training, Development and Organisational Learning - Poor - Declined".

My conclusion is that if members of the Authority are too idle to read important documents - inadequate though such reports may be - for themselves, they deserve the Order of the Boot. I published some time ago my opinion that the Authority is ignorant of the way in which Sussex Police actually work. Their acceptance of this report by the Chief Constable strengthens that view.

The Authority met again on 15th February, but I have been unable to view the proceedings. According to the Sussex Police Authority website, ""Sussex Police Authority meetings are web cast using facilities provided by East Sussex County Council." This is not true of the annual February meeting, as I learned from the Authority:

"All SPA meetings are web cast except for the budget meeting which is always held in February. This meeting takes place in Chichester (where the Treasurers Department is based)where unfortunately they don't have the technology to web cast."

The public might take slightly more interest in the Council's activities were their deliberations more easily accessible, and voters could judge the results of their choices better were all meetings conveniently available to them, and not merely the sanitised and largely impersonal minutes that are available online. Is the County Treasurer immobile in February?

23rd April 2007 As part of my ongoing enquiries into the lousy quality of policing in South Wealden, and not being able to sample online the Authority's meeting of 15th February, I decided to look at some of the paperwork associated with that meeting, but got no further than the mind-numbing pdf on the Local Policing Plan 2007 - 08, according to which the Clerk and the Chief Constable have changed places, John Godfrey now being the Chief Constable.

A week after the SPA meeting of 26th April, the webcast became accessible to me, and I discovered that Godfrey was still the Clerk, though he was also during the meeting to be referred to as the "chief execurtive". The meeting started with the Chairman forgetting to switch on his microphone. Seven minutes later came a noteworthy piece of news: "There is, if you like, a piece of urgent business, and in my view it's a piece of sad business, and that is to tell everybody that Joe Edwards is to retire as Chief Constable of Sussex at the end of September, on the completion of his fixed-term contract with the Police Authority . . . [after] one and a half years as our Chief Constable . . . He's been an outstanding chief for us . . . an absolutely consummate professional . . . he's made a tremendous contribution nationally . . he truly will be a very hard act to follow . . . he leaves Sussex Police in great shape at a time when performances are reaching record levels and our surveys of the public show that they trust and have confidence in our police force and that that is improving month by month . . . you really have done an outstanding job for us . . . truly outstanding job you have done for us." [Why aren't Sussex people petitioning in vast numbers for this paragon to postpone his retirement?]

One then learned from the Chief Constable that it had been on that day (26th April 2007) that he had told the SPA Chairman of his intention to retire. The only reason he gave involved the expiration of his fixed-term appointment.

My major interest here is in the workings of the Complaints Committee. Its Chairman, in his report to the Authority, made three points, each of them in varying degrees deplorable.

1. "What I think is most interesting here is the comparison between the close to half a million incidents . . . handled during the period concerned and the number of complaints that arise therefrom - it's fewer than one . . . nought point nine nine one per thousand incidents." What other evidence is needed to demonstrate that the Sussex Police Authority members live in cloud-cuckoo land? No one challenged the figures. [P.S. I have explained the reference to Aristophanes in a video at www.youtube.com, accessible by clicking this cuckoo-land link.]

2. ". . . the very regrettable death of five young people in Hollington . . . I think we already know that the coroner's inquest turned out to be a significant step and commented relatively favourably on those who have been involved, but the important thing for today is the draw members' attention to a letter that has been received - in fact only today - in which the Independent Police Complaints Commission draws the conclusion that it would be unreasonable having regard to all the circumstances to apply a misconduct sanction to Acting Police Sergeant Sandeman." [Did the coroner really comment quite favourably on those involved in the crash?]

3. Mr Rogers ended by saying, "We certainly believe that we have a role to play in relation to the way that such complaints are investigated." [As a member of the public, I certainly believe that the SPA should not be allowed any such role.]

The Chief Constable then commented briefly on the IPCC's letter: "I am of course very pleased that Sergeant Sandeman has been cleared by their enquiries indeed we've already known from the outcome from the coroner's inquest but they were [?] pleased it's with no sense of celebration . . . ' [I can't make sense of what follows]. As to what the IPCC said, I know only what Mr Rogers told us, as nothing has yet (6/5/07) appeared on the IPCC's website, but in view of the acting sergeant's unauthorised actions as revealed at the inquest, "cleared" does not seem to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. In my notes on the crash, published on this website, Mr Sandeman is not a sergeant but an acting sergeant, and "He said he was not a trained 'safe follow' driver and was not authorised to engage a vehicle in a pursuit." Yet he turned on his blue lights, double-flashed his headlights, put on his sirens, and increased speed to follow the stolen car. Less than two minutes later, the five teenagers were dead. An IPCC commissioner is quoted as saying, ""The inquest revealed some confusion about the pursuit policy adopted by Sussex Police, including both how it was communicated to patrol officers and how it was comprehended."

As someone with experience of educational institutions at all levels, and of the ignorance of some police officers, I think the most fatuous pronouncement of this meeting came from Mr Dunn: " PCSO's in schools . . . there is no doubt at all that the presence of the PCSO and the close connection with PCSO's between schools has a hugely beneficial effect in the locality." Mrs Collins commented, "I think it's very important that we educate the press . . . that if they're going to write anything about it, it's in a positive way"! [All in favour, raise your right arm at an oblique angle.]

Sussex Police Authority met again on 15th June. Nothing was said that was of interest to me: the spokesperson for the Complaints Committee spoke for less than two minutes and did little more than repeat what had been said by another spokesperson at the previous Authority meeting. So I read the report of the Complaints Committee on its meeting of 9th May, and am examining on another page the following statements in the light of my own experience:

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.

26th July 2007 Today I learned from local tv that Martin Richards, the Chief Constable of Wiltshire Constabulary, has been appointed as the next Chief Constable of Sussex, so I looked him up online.

According to the Wiltshire Police website, Martin Richards was to become Chief Constable of Wiltshire in September 2004. Mr Richards was quoted on the website as saying: "Wiltshire Constabulary has a national reputation for consistently good performance."

If that was true, it was not to last.

The news.independent.co.uk website reported on 29 April 2006, "The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has upheld two complaints by the family of Ms Richards against Wiltshire Police. Commissioners said there had been a systematic failure by the force." Ms Richards, 23 years old and pregnant, told the police she was "petrified" after being seriously assaulted in her flat by her boyfried. Wiltshire Police assessed the risk from the boyfried as "low". Six days later the boyfried "slashed her throat with a knife at her flat" and was jailed for life. "Martin Richards, the chief constable of Wiltshire, said that he was 'deeply sorry' for mistakes and 'wrong decisions' made at the time."

The salisburyjournal.co.uk website on 19th July 2007 reported: "A party of 14 students from the Gulf State of Qatar has been hounded out of Salisbury by racist yobs. The students had intended spending five weeks in the city, studying at the Twin English Centre in the Market Square. But they left after just a week after being intimidated and verbally abused on at least six different occasions by groups of local youths."

Isolated cases can of course give a seriously misleading impression of policing and crime in an area. For a wider view, one can turn to the reports of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary.

An HMIC report dated January 2006 rated Professional Standards in Sussex Police (to my astonishment) as GOOD, and made two recommendations for improvements. The equivalent report for Wiltshire Police rated their Professional Standards as FAIR, with seven recommendations for improvements.

More wide-ranging was Wiltshire Constabulary Baseline Assessment October 2006. Page 13 of that report prints the grades awarded to Wiltshire Police for twenty-three categories of policing, which totalled as follows:

EXCELLENT none , GOOD eight (of which four were for Resource Use), FAIR eleven, and POOR four (for Neighbourhood Policing and Problem Solving; Managing Critical Incidents and Major Crime; Tackling Serious and Organised Criminality; and Protecting Vulnerable People).

28th July 2007 Yesterday the Authority met again, but as the video of the meeting is not yet available, I read the report of the Complaints Committee on its meeting of 18 July 2007. The following quotations and comments concern paragraphs 4.1 to 4.3.

"The Committee considered a report on complaints against Sussex Police for the period from 1 April 2007 to 30 June 2007 . . . .

"The number of complaints recorded during the period has increased by 100% over the same period for the previous year (an increase from 151 to 302 complaints)."

According to the Committee, "an increase in complaints was anticipated nationally due to the Police Reform Act 2004 which widens the parameters of who can make a complaint against the police and now includes complaints against police staff and special constables."

Moreover, "Sussex Police has already adopted new recording standards in advance of the introduction of a national scheme. As a result, a complaint was recorded whether it ultimately turned out to be a genuine one or not, something that didn't happen with the previous system. The new recording standards were adopted on 1 April 2007 and account for around 50 of the increased number of complaints."

"In addition, a complaint in connection with an ongoing case and thus sub judice, was not recorded in the past until the case had been concluded. This was no longer the practice and had affected the statistics."

"It was noted that there was increased public confidence in the integrity of the complaints procedure . . . It is estimated that around a third of the rise might be accounted for by the increased public confidence in the system."

It looks as though comment on this stuff should be on a separate page, as it will involve inter alia The Police Act 1996 and The Police Reform Act 2002. The Police Reform Act 2004 seems to have been an invention of the Complaints Committee. As far as I have been able to discover, in 2004 there were only Orders supplemental to The Police Reform Act 2002.

31st July 2007 On the latest SPA video, the Chairman announced that the new Chief Constable, from 1st October, would be Stuart (or Stewart) Richards of Wiltshire Constabulary.

30th August 2007 A few days ago I received the annual exercise in self-advertisement called "Your Annual Newspaper from the Sussex Police Authority and the Chief Constable of Sussex Police". I immediately selected a table which purported to be a "National Assessment of Sussex's Performance" for comment in an email that I sent the same day to local newspapers. The Eastbourne Herald published the letter across three columns on 31st August, under the heading "Selective statistics from the police?"

"Policing East Sussex 2007 has just arrived through my letter box. Being often, through experience, sceptical of the claims that Sussex Police and Sussex Police Authority make for themselves, I tried to check some of the statistics offered in this newspaper, without much success: the Home Office have yet to publish detailed crime figures for the financial year 2006-7 on their website, the Sussex Police website has a very limited amount of statistical data, and the Sussex Police Authority website apparently none at all.

"A table on Page 6 of the newspaper, however, seems to bear more than an accidental resemblance - excepting its last item - to a table published on Page 14 of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary's Baseline Assessment of Sussex Police, October 2006. There are considerable differences between the two tables.

"HMIC assigns Grades to twenty-three categories: Sussex Police assigns a Delivery level to only seven.

"The police table starts with Reducing Crime - Good (Improved), though there is no such category for HMIC, which has Volume Crime Reduction - Good (Stable). Investigating Crime is not simply Good (Improved) as the police say: HMIC has five categories under this subheading, one of which is Tackling Serious and Organised Criminality - Fair (Stable).

"Promoting Safety has been reduced by the police from two categories to one; Providing Assistance from three (one only Fair, not Good) to one; and Citizen Focus from four (one only Fair, not Good) to one. Sussex Police claim Local Policing - Good (Improved), though HMIC have no such category, apart from Neighbourhood Policing and Problem Solving as a category under Citizen Focus, for which Sussex Police had already claimed one Good.

"Resource Use in the police table (Fair, Improved) departs from the HMIC grading of six categories under this heading, two being graded Poor, not Fair, and one of which had Declined, not Improved.

"These discrepancies, perhaps thought relatively insignificant individually, seen in the context of the fact that HMIC's reports on the performance of police forces are based largely on self-assessment by the forces being assessed, show a worrying lack of scrupulousness and honesty."

The Authority met again on 18th October. The webcast lasted less than 68 minutes, and I emailed the SPA to say that the production was "seriously incompetent": some of it was completely inaudible, and much of the rest difficult to hear with normal settings for volume controls. Desktop microphones were often too far from the speakers, who sometimes turned to address their remarks to the Chairman, or they were not switched on. Three of the eight councillor members of the Authority - i.e. the three East Sussex councillors - were not present, including the Chairman of the Complaints Committee, but as I have been unable to find any evidence that the Committee has met since 18th July, perhaps Mr Rogers' absence was not important. Complaints were not on the agenda.

In any case the fact that I as an East Sussex resident was not represented at the meeting is put into perspective when one realises that not much was said anyway by the elected representatives present. If one excludes the Chairman, elected councillors, at one of only six meetings during the year, spoke for a total of fourteen minutes and nine seconds.

When Sussex Police Authority met on December 13th 2007, included in the agenda was a report from the Complaints Committee on their meeting of 1st November. This agenda item lasted eleven minutes, most of which was taken up with discussion about what the Complaints Committee should be called.

Mr Mortimer (elected, Labour), Chairman of the November meeting, introduced the item. He started: "I'd like to draw members' attention to 2.2, where it says the number of complaints recorded during the six months till the 30th September has increased by 67% . . . We examined the reasons behind the increase and decided that it was quite right that the major reason was the changes introduced by The Police Reform Act 2004 . . . We also took into account that of the 362 finalised complaints only eighteen were substantiated. And we also paid a lot of attention to the high number of incidents - nearly 305,000 - in Sussex, so the rate of complaints per thousand was still very low." He ended by saying, "We recommend that the Complaints Committee be renamed the Professional Standards Committee."

Mr Mortimer's extraordinary claim that the remarkable rise in the number of recorded complaints was caused by legislation requires examination. There is no such thing as The Police Reform Act 2004, only Orders relating to The Police Reform Act 2002. The Police Reform Act 2002 (Commencement No. 8) Order 2004 stipulates:

2. The following provisions of the Police Reform Act 2002 shall come into force on 1st April 2004 -
    (a) Part 2 (complaints and misconduct) to the extent not already in force; . . . .
    (d) Schedule 3 (handling of complaints and conduct matters etc.) to the extent not already in force;

Compared with the figures for April to September 2006, figures for recorded complaints April to September 2007 showed an increase of 67%. How legislation which came into force on 1st April 2004 can have affected the 2007 figures but not the 2006 figures is not explained.

Mr Mortimer's then says: "of the 362 finalised complaints only eighteen were substantiated". From my own experience, I think I know the reason for the 5% success rate of complainants: Sussex Police is a thoroughly dishonest organisation. It employs dishonest police officers like PS Dogberry, PC Wilkinson and PC Francis, and pays dishonest Professional Standards officers like DI Preddy to fend off any criticism of poorly selected and trained and very inadequately supervised police officers.

Then Mr Mortimer trots out the usual nonsense about the number of complaints compared with the number of incidents. Most complaints are not recorded by Sussex Police. Either the police should record a complaint, or give a reason for not doing so. Often Sussex Police have done neither. Written complaints that I have made to the Police Complaints Authority, the Sussex Police Authority, PI Brown, CI Matthews, and CC Edwards have not been recorded or even acknowledged.

Mr Mortimer's concluding comment was the only one which occasioned any difference of opinion. The first response came from Mr Duncan (elected, Green Party): "I see the Chief Executive's rationale for the fact that the Committee deals with matters beyond those that are simply complaints." Was the change of name really the idea of the person who earlier this year was referred to as the Clerk? Mr Duncan went on: "I'm just not sure that for every member of the public the fact that the Police Authority has a Professional Standards Committee is as meaningful as that it's got a Complaints Committee looking at the record of the force in terms of complaints."

This point was answered by the Chief Executive (the unelected Dr Godfrey): "I think the title Professional Standards is more in common currency amongst our fellow police authorities and police forces and I think you know internally would make more sense and would be more consistent."

Insofar as I have looked at the arrangements of other police authorities, there appears to be no common currency, and it is surprising that the SPA employs as its chief executive a person who thinks that it "would make more sense and would be more consistent" to rename the Complaints Committee, so that the Authority now has a Standards Committee and a Professional Standards Committee.

Mrs Shaves (unelected) spoke next: "There isn't any reason why it can't be renamed the Professional Standards and Complaints Committee."

This elicited an immediate rejoinder from the Chief Executive: "That wasn't actually what I was suggesting."

Though not on the face of it funny, this remark produced a good deal of laughter. You stupid woman! Didn't you hear what the Chief Executive said? Did you think your idea was worth a moment's consideration? Don't you realise that the Metropolitan Police Authority and the Merseyside Police Authority have Professional Standards and Complaints Committees; that the Devon and Cornwall Authority has a Professional Standards and Complaints Monitoring Group; and that Greater Manchester, Hampshire and Bedfordshire Police Authorities have Complaints & Professional Standards Committees only because they lack a chief executive of the calibre of Dr Godfrey?

The Chief Constable's former county has a Complaints Committee, and so has Dorset. Lincolnshire has a Complaints and Conduct Committee, Leicestershire a Complaints and Discipline Committee, and West Yorkshire a Complaints & Litigation Committee. No sign of Dr Godfrey's common currency there.

Deputy Chief Constable Williams (unelected, not a member of the Authority) then spoke: "I do support the renaming . . . It's not at all to take away the focus from dealing with complaints." Professional Standards, he said, involved much more than just complaints. He went on, " I can give you lots of examples of work that we do", but when it came to actually giving us an example, it was of quite astonishing feebleness: "for example, if an inappropriate email was sent within the organisation, which we have had, we've dealt with that very thoroughly and very professionally."

Mr Theobald (elected, Conservative) spoke next. It seemed at first as if he had the effrontery to agree with Mr Duncan: "I've great sympathy for what Ben has said, because from the public's point of view, complaints means that there is somebody who is actually listening or considering complaints." But then he said that he did understand the Deputy Chief Constable's point. Though he did end by saying he was sorry to see the word "complaints" go, the general impression left by Mr Theobald's contribution was of indecision.

Chief Constable Richards (unelected, not a member of the Authority) then spoke: he said "we're one of the organisations about which it's dead easy to make complaints . . . I think that anything we can do to present all that we do, not just those little irritants . . . those issues that are wholly unrepresentative, I think this would be a wonderful opportunity to do just that."

The Chief Constable is mistaken in thinking that it is easy to make a complaint about Sussex Police. I have already commented about the disgraceful Sussex Police complaints system on several occasions on this website, and on YouTube, so I will not repeat those observations here. The Chief Constable's next statement is interesting: he fails to explain what he means by "little irritants" and unrepresentative issues, but they might be taken to refer to complaints from the public or to the complainants themselves. As the statement is not entirely clear, it is too early as yet to decide that the new chief constable displays fascist tendencies.

Mr Rogers (elected, Lib Dem), the Chairman of the Complaints Committee, had not been present for his committee's meeting; and though he was present on this occasion, he said not a word.

The last speaker on this agenda item was Dr Bush (unelected, Vice-Chairman of the Police Authority). He was strongly against having Complaints in the committee's title: "As the Chief's already said we don't have any shortage of complaints and having sat on that committee for some years it's very apparent to me that people know how to use it and people notice how to misuse it as well and it is done so on a number of occasions . . . our society is very good at the negative we're not so good at the positive or looking at the developmental."

Clear expression or logic do not seem to be Dr Bush's strong points. The antecedent of "it" in the phrase "misuse it" is "committee", but I am not sure whether Dr Bush really means to say or imply that the Committee should not be called the Complaints Committee because people will misuse the committee, and if the name is changed they will not be able or inclined to misuse it. Whatever he meant, he seems to take an unfavourable view about people who complain about the police.

To conclude, the Authority decided that the Complaints Committee would in future be known as the Professional Standards Committee.

Sussex Police Authority may be unique in having both a Standards Committee and a Professional Standards Committee. No doubt the Authority are now ensconced more comfortably in Cloud-Cuckoo Land, as less attention will be drawn to the disagreeable subject of complaints, while in the real world, the animals seem to be taking over the zoo.

29th December 2007: P.S. As I shall not have the opportunity to hear what the Authority next have to say on the subject of complaints until April at the earliest, unless I am prepared to go to Chichester, I will note down action that the Authority proposes to take presumably soon after their December meeting as a way of preserving the public's awareness of the complaints system.

When invited by the Chairman to address the point that Mr Duncan had made about a change of name, Dr Godfrey - as far as I can make out from his bumbling delivery - said: "But - but I think that in - in presenting the way you know what - what that committee does on our website and in publications and so on, we - we can still make it very clear that that's the committee that deals with complaints and you know use that word quite [brief unintelligible phrase] you know clearly as well [unintelligible word] because you know I quite understand Ben's point is that a word that means more to the public than professional standards."

The Chairman, Mr Barnard (elected, Conservative), in concluding that the Authority should "stick with" the Complaints Committee's decision on a change of name, was less specific.: "We should have in all the literature and website the fact that we do deal with complaints."

To provide a benchmark against which to judge the attitudes towards complaints and complainants of members of the Authority and the Chief Constable, I will quote what is not only an official view but what I think would be considered the norm. It is taken from the HMIC publication Raising the standard - A thematic inspection of professional standards, undated, but published I think in 2006:

3.1 The Police Service depends on the confidence of the public it serves in order to operate effectively. This confidence can only be reinforced by the conviction that the Service is willing to listen to feedback in terms of complaints, deal effectively with these issues in a timely and efficient manner, accept that mistakes can be made and address these in the spirit of learning. It must make effective reparations without lengthy and expensive judicial processes and deal swiftly and positively with officers and staff who transgress.

3rd March 2008 As the Complaints Committee is now the Professional Standards Committee, although the Authority website still lists four of its five functions as having to do with complaints (the fifth being to report on other "issues"), my interest in this committee's work prompted me to look into the function of the Standards Committee, as a help in distinguishing the two.

A search of the website only produced one relevant document. Although sorting using computers is straightforward and easily programmed, the SPA search facility seems to have been arranged to make locating documents next to impossible. The single one that I found I accessed using a "View Committee Documents" link.

On using that link, I was presented with another link, entitled "Standards Committee 11 July 07.pdf". That proved unusually informative if not entirely accurate as the title for an SPA website document, which comprises the agenda for 11 July 2007, the minutes of a meeting dated 22 June 2006, and a report by the Chief Executive for an item on the 2007 agenda.

According to the minutes of the 2006 meeting, four people were present, though it is clear from the minutes that the protagonist was none of these, but the Clerk. Looking at this material, and the description of the Standards Committee's function on the SPA website, it seems that the remit of this small assembly is entirely incestuous: "to promote and maintain high standards of conduct by members of the Police Authority", of which of course they are members.

21st June 2008 Sussex Police Authority held a 67-minute public meeting on 12th June 2008, and eight days later one was able to view the web cast. The sole point of interest for me was the discovery that the Authority had seen fit to promote Mr Mortimer to the chairmanship of the Complaints Committtee, now known as the Professional Standards Committee.

This committee had not met recently and so had nothing to report, but Mr Mortimer did contribute to an item called "Financial Outturn". I am printing his contribution here - making as much sense of it as I can - in order to put on record an example of the qualities that this buffoon brings to what I regard as an important post:

Mortimer : [unintelligible for two seconds] just an observation really - erm - I - I join with the - erm - members who congratulate the officer for producing this report. [clears throat] I understood nearly all of it - but it's a good report. The only thing that - sticks in my craw and I'm pretty - pretty sure other members' is on page twenty-five where we're put in six hundred odd thousand back into reserve - it should have been in the police officer's pay packet. Er, I think the - um - Home Secretary [unintelligible word] was disgusting - um - she should have packed the job in - er - and what did we gain? What on earth did we gain? I don't know. Anybody tell me?

Voice off camera: - told her that.

Mortimer: What's that?

Voice off camera: We told the Home Secretary that.

Mortimer: I know we did. [unintelligible] stuck in my throat there [unintelligible]

Chairman: Thank you, John. Don't think you'll find much to disagree [unintelligible word or phrase].

8th August 2008 The SPA met again on 31st July, but eight days later the webcast is still not available.

I am interested in the extent to which the report from the Professional Standards Committee throws further light on the comments on increased complaints made in the report made to the SPA on 17th April following the PSD meeting on 12 March 2008. Mr Mortimer said:

"Members took some time dealing with the percentage increase of complaints. We wanted to reassure ourselves that it wasn't just peculiar to Sussex Police Authority alone and were told that most other authorities 'll find that their complaints are increasing. Also we were informed that because Sussex Police has dealt with a lot more incidents, inevitably there are more complaints that arise from that. However, we did want a lot more information and we were told that we will get it. We need to know are we alone, is Sussex worse than neighbouring police authorities? I don't think we are but we need to know that. . . . at the next complaints meeting we hope that we'll get a lot more information to reassure us that this is not only Sussex that's got a problem, it is a problem in other authorities."

The minutes of the meeting, however, are available, so I'll look at those.
1.1 We are told of five people who attended this meeting, all members of the authority: one elected (Mortimer - Chairman and Labour councillor) and four unelected (Bratton, Bull, Faiz, and Walker).
1.2 "The Chairman requested that the Committee's terms of reference be reviewed." Presumably the Authority put the cart before the horse by changing the Committee's name before considering its terms of reference. Who is supposed to be doing the review is not disclosed.

Though the second section of the minutes is called "Complaints against the Police", there is nothing whatever in it of the "lot more information" hoped for "at the next complaints [slip of the tongue?] meeting". Instead we are told, "2.2 The number of complaints recorded during the period has decreased by 6.4% over the same period for the previous year (decreased from 299 to 281)."

This spawned an article in a local newspaper under the heading, "Police complaints fall for the first time." I sent the editor a short note: "In the Gazette for 30th July, you published an article stating, "Police complaints fall for the first time [since] 2004." This appears to be untrue. The report of the Sussex Police Authority Complaints Committee for its meeting dated 27 July 2005, paragraph 3.1, under a sub-heading "Complaints Against Sussex Police 1 April 2005 to 30 June 2005" starts: "The report showed that the number of complaints during the period had decreased by 4.85% over the same period for the previous year (decreased from 108 to 103)."

The newspaper's second paragraph referred to a six per cent drop in complaints, "281 against 299". Thinking this a sad piece of churnalism, I wrote to the editor, who published this on 6th August:

In the Gazette for 30th July, you published statistics for the spring quarter suggesting a six per cent drop in complaints against Sussex Police compared with the 2007 figures. I do not remember your publishing the figures given in the minutes of the March meeting of the Professional Standards Committee, previously known as the Complaints Committtee, for a longer and therefore more significant time span. In the interests of balance, you may like to print the opening of paragraph 2.2: "The number of complaints recorded during the period 1 April 2007 to 31 December 2007 has increased from 407 to 806 over the same period for the previous year."

On 15th August the Eastbourne Herald published a letter from me under the sub-heading "Police and Home Office figures conflict":

I have just received the East Sussex "Local Policing" newspaper, which I read with scepticism as usual. I will cite just the simplest of statistics to suggest why your readers should resent paying annually for this exercise in public relations by Sussex Police and its Authority.

On page 6 is what purports to be the "National assessment of Sussex's performance." A similar table appears on a Home Office website, with a few noteworthy differences. The police newspaper has five "Good" assessments, and only two "Fair" assessments, suggesting a preponderance of Good.

The Home Office table has five "Good" assessments for Sussex, and six "Fair", suggesting a preponderance of not-so-good. The Fair "performance areas" not included by the newspaper concern categories of vulnerable people: Child abuse investigations, Domestic violence, Missing persons, and Public protection.

21st August 2008 Today I wrote again to the editor of the Eastbourne Herald/Gazette. The first version of the letter complained of lateness of a webcast of the July SPA meeting. Then in the evening I had to ask for the letter not to be printed as I discovered - not on the webcast page of the website - that there would be no webcast. I rewrote the letter to reflect the changed circumstances:

I waited in vain for three weeks to see the webcast of the July meeting of Sussex Police Authority. Their website states that Authority meetings are webcast. They do not bother to tell us that the February meeting is not webcast. Nor do they tell us when webcasts will be made available. Travelling to Lewes or Chichester to attend a meeting which may last little more than an hour is not an appealing alternative. Then I discovered, not on the webcast page but on a page about the meeting, that "due to technical difficulties, this meeting will not be broadcast or available via the web."

I think this very unsatisfactory. Hitherto, "technical difficulties" in my experience have consisted of speakers failing to turn on their microphones. The public should be given the precise reasons for the lack of a webcast on this occasion, as minutes are a very inadequate substitute for what is said at a meeting. The poor quality of what sometimes passes for argument at Authority meetings might be improved if the public - and therefore local newspapers - took more interest in what goes on there. A prerequisite for this is easy access to meetings. In particular, the role of elected councillors needs to be monitored, as it is only through them that the public has any effective control over bureaucratic processes.

7th September 2008 Having yesterday read Friday's issue of a local newspaper, today I emailed the Advertising Standards Authority":

I looked at your non-broadcast CAP codes, and was discouraged from reading the complete document because early on I received a strong impression that "advertising" is almost synonymous with "marketing", which could imply selling in a quite literal sense.

I consulted your website after reading a local newspaper which for years had been publishing police churnalism with selective and unsubstantiated statistics for crime figures, and finding a few pages after another such piece of cheap journalism a full-page advertisement for the "Safer Communities Partnership" with for instance the claim that an over- 60% reduction in the incidence of burglary, theft from vehicles, and robbery was "a result of the work undertaken by Eastbourne District Police and the Eastbourne Crime Reduction Partnership".

I would be interested to learn whether the ASA has an interest in such matters before I enquire into the provenance of the figures, which I have failed to find in statistics published by the Home Office.

9th September 2008 As I do not have a page for Eastbourne Borough Council, whom this item concerns, I am recording here my latest submission to the editor of the Eastbourne Herald:

In the Herald of 5th September, a downward trend in crime figures for Eastbourne was attributed to the town's Crime Reduction Partnership. According to the most recent figures for recorded crime that I have been able to find, over twelve months in Eastbourne drug offences rose by 10.1%, compared with 5.5% for Sussex, and serious violence rose by 15.4%, compared with a reduction of 9.7% for Sussex. Was the Crime Reduction Partnership responsible for the increases?

Though the Herald is coping with two of the most important stories of the year, it published my letter on 12/09/08.

10th September 2008 Nor do I have a page for the Safer Communities Partnership, but its Chair is a member of the SPA, so the text of the email I've just sent it goes here:

The Safer Communities Partnership seems to have been responsible for a full-page advertisement in the "Eastbourne Herald" for 5th September 2008. I wish to discover whether this advertisement complies with the Advertising Standards Authority's Committee of Advertising Practice Code. I presume that the advertisement is not protected as being "statutory, public, police and other official notices/information" (1.2f), and that it should therefore be "honest and truthful" (2.1), and that those who produced it "must hold documentary evidence to prove all claims . . . that are capable of objective substantiation."(3.1)

The advertisement twice asserts, next to your Chair's name, that East Sussex is "one of the safest counties in the UK". Where can I find the figures that substantiate this? The Home Office only seems to concern itself with police force areas, the SPA do not seem to publish any statistics at all, and on Sussex Police's website I have only been able to find figures for small areas of Sussex.

The Home Office has published a statistical bulletin, "Crime in England and Wales 2007/08". This includes tables from which one can compare Sussex with other force areas in England and Wales. Table 6.01 concerns British Crime Survey incidents of crime and victimisation, with figures for forty-two forces. Thirteen forces have a better score than Sussex, and four have the same score. Table 6.11 gives figures for Violence against the person per 10,000 population. Twenty-one forces have better figures than Sussex. Unless the Safer Communities Partnership has official figures that demonstrate that East Sussex has substantially lower figures than West Sussex, then the claim that East Sussex is one of the safest counties in the UK would appear to be a shameless attempt to brainwash the public, at their expense.

I am also interested in the claims that crime in Eastbourne is down by "over 20%" or "20%", depending on which part of the advertisement one looks at. Where can I find the figures which substantiate the claimed reductions of 61 to 67% for three categories of crime since 2003/4? I can no longer find figures for more than two years on the Sussex Police website.

The message, sent to Information Officer, received a prompt response from a machine: "I am currently Out of the Office and will return on Monday 22nd September."

14th September 2008 Today I wrote to the SPA:

I wish to complain about the poor quality of information given to the public about SPA meetings. Your website Home Page says, "Sussex Police Authority meetings are web cast". That, as you must know, is not altogether true: only some of the meetings are webcast. Four meetings have taken place this year, and only two of them have been webcast. One was not webcast by design; the other omission was put down to "technical difficulties", when the public deserves a full and honest explanation of why those proceedings were not accessible to them through a webcast.

On the Authority Meetings page of the website, we are told that "meetings are open to the public", and are informed of the dates, but as to location we learn only that they "are usually held at County Hall, Lewes, East Sussex, except for the budget meeting in February, usually held at County Hall in Chichester, West Sussex".

The minimum information required on this page for each meeting is its date and time (which we already have), its location, whether it is to be webcast, and if so, when.

19th September 2008 Yesterday, having noticed that the next meeting of the Authority is to take place in Hove, I emailed the SPA to ask whether the meeting would be webcast. When I checked my email this morning, I was pleased to find I had received two emails, with good news, from the Policy Officer.

The first, dated 18/09/2008, said ". . . we have been advised that the technology [to create webcasts] will soon be made available at County Hall, Chichester and therefore the next February meeting will hopefully be webcast. I shall ensure the website reports the correct information." The failure to webcast the last meeting was due to software upgrades "that were not installed correctly." I was also given details of the first four 2009 meetings: 12 February 2009, 2pm, County Hall, Chichester; 16 April 2009, 2pm, County Hall, Lewes; 11 June 2009, 2pm, County Hall, Lewes; 30 July 2009, 2pm, County Hall, Lewes."

The second email, 19/09/08, said: "The October meeting is due to be held in Hove Town Hall where they have webcasting facilities which we are hoping to use on the day."

The envisaged expansion of webcasting is very welcome, as would be any improvement in public access to the work of county councillors.

27th September 2008 Today, in yesterday's Eastbourne Herald, I was surprised to find a letter which took issue with my letter which appeared on the 12th September (see 9th September above). I immediately wrote to the editor:

A letter in the Herald of 26th September from the local Crime Reduction Partnership Co-ordinator criticised my letter in the 12th September edition which quoted rises in drugs offences and serious violence. As regards the drugs figures, I must admit that I was entirely ignorant of the way in which the Partnership measures success: if crime figures have gone down, it is because the Partnership has prevented crimes from taking place, and if crime figures have risen, it is because the Partnership has caught more criminals! Further, Bob Gough seems to contradict my statement that "serious violence rose by 15.4%" by saying, "Violent crime is also down 4.6% this year compared to last."

If you go to www.sussex.police.uk and click on 'LOCAL CRIME INFORMATION' and then click on 'Eastbourne - local crime information' and then on 'Search crime rates' and then 'save this file' or 'find a program online to open it', you can read a spreadsheet which has "Serious Violence" in "Eastbourne District" "Change [increase] since last year" "15.4%". There is no category of "Violent crime" in the table. I would like to know where I can find the source of Bob Gough's figures.

Incidentally, I wrote to the local Safer Communities Partnership on 10th September, as it seemed to be responsible for a full-page advertisement in the Herald of 5th September. I wished to discover whether this advertisement complies with the Advertising Standards Authority's Committee of Advertising Practice Code, which requires that advertisements are "honest and truthful", and that those who produce them "must hold documentary evidence to prove all claims . . . that are capable of objective substantiation."

I quoted recent Home Office crime figures and suggested that the advertisement might be "a shameless attempt to brainwash the public, at their expense." I asked where I could find the figures which substantiate the claims made in the advertisement. I am still waiting for a reply.

29th November 2008 The Mail Online headlined the story of Damian Green's arrest: "Police state Britain: MPs want protection after arrest of Tory for telling truths Labour didn't want you to know." Invited to make a short comment. I wrote:

"The media are ensuring that any police malpractice in this case will be challenged. For ordinary victims of police malpractice, however, whose cases do not merit national attention, there is no such advocacy. When I was a victim of dishonest Sussex police officers, the force's Professional Standards Department and the Independent Police Complaints Commission both dishonestly defended the officers; and Sussex Police Authority are only intent on supporting the police in whatever they do, and are opposed to the government's plans to have directly elected members. There must be many people who feel that they might as well be living in a police state, as there is no effective control over their local force."

I commented even more briefly on another story, " 'Blunkett's bobbies' to be given powers of detention by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith". The article included comments by Paul McKeever, chairman of the Police Federation, who "criticised the Home Office decision to introduce directly-elected police authorities, causing fear that the BNP will win seats in certain areas." Mr McKeever is quoted as saying, "'This is not good for an apolitical independent police service." I commented:

'The idea that the police service should be "independent" is dangerous nonsense, and Mr McKeever undermines the silly idea that it is "apolitical" by wanting to prevent a particular political party from having any influence, which betrays of course a political attitude.'

18th December 2008 MailOnline ran a story headed "Home Secretary ditches police election plan". Though comments from readers were invited, at 10.45 a.m. not a single comment had been appended to the story. The story said, "Ms Smith blamed opposition from senior police." I made a brief comment:

The opposition to reform comes from members of police authorities as well as from the police themselves. When the subject was discussed by Sussex Police Authority, no one spoke up in favour of reform. On the contrary, members who spoke at all followed the lead of the Chief Executive in condemning the idea of direct elections. The Authority feared that directly elected members might disagree with the Chief Constable!

Such attitudes result in Sussex Police having far too much "operational independence". They are often not held accountable for malpractice.

When I checked back more than an hour later, the article still ended, "No comments have so far been submitted." Perhaps "acceptable" was meant. At 2.30 p.m., still (allegedly) no submissions.

timesonline headed its version of the story, "Ministers decide against police authority elections". By 11.30 a.m., only one reader's comment had been added. I didn't spend long in tailoring my comment to suit the 300-character limit on contributions:

When the subject of direct elections was discussed by Sussex Police Authority, members who spoke at all followed the lead of the Chief Executive in condemning the idea of direct elections. The Authority feared that directly elected members might disagree with the Chief Constable!

When I checked back just after 2.30 p.m., I had to search for the story under the Politics tab, and found that my contribution appeared as the third of nine comments.

21st December 2008 I added the following to a web page on the IPCC:

A report of the Sussex Police Authority Professional Standards Committee on its October 2008 meeting - alleged to be by its Chairman - said that, "The Committee welcomed Mr Mike Franklin the IPCC Commissioner for the South East Region". From paragraph 3.9 of the report it seems that the IPCC's whitewashing activities extend beyond the police, to police authorities. Mr Franklin, it is said, "supported fully" this, "was encouraged" by that, "welcomed" the other, and "agreed" with something else. Most laughable of all, he apparently said, "it is to the credit of the Force that people felt able to complain" !

25th January 2009 Today I visited the Authority's website to find the dates of public meetings due to be held this year. On the Authority Meetings page, it said, "The dates for future meetings of the full Authority are listed below." The list consisted of one item: "Thursday 18th December ". I had to click a link to find that that meant December 2008.

6th March 2009 Today I visited the Authority's website to find the dates of public meetings due to be held this year. On the Authority Meetings page, it said, "The dates for future meetings of the full Authority are listed below." The list consisted of one item: "Thursday 12th February 2009 ". Perhaps Sussex Police Authority are not keen to have members of the public witness public meetings.

Authority meeting, 12 February, 2009, Agenda item 10, Police Authority Inspections

Chief Executive: "The Police Authority is now with some trepidation entering into an area with which the Chief Constable and the Force are very familiar indeed. They've been inspected for a very long time. Previously though it's not been felt appropriate for police authorities, who after all are the body which are appointed to oversee the police, should themselves be inspected. However, wiser counsels than mine have prevailed, and parliament in its wisdom has changed the law, so that we are now saddled with this new approach, which will be introduced with some enthusiasm by HMIC and the Audit Commision in the summer of this year . . . And I think essentially what they'll be seeking evidence about is the value which the Police Authority adds to the business. Why can't we just let the police get on with policing Sussex? Why do we need a police authority to oversee what they're doing? What do we add? What do we bring to the table? and so on . . . So I'm sure that we all feel that we do contribute quite a lot. The issue I think will be to demonstrate that, and to do it in the sort of tick-box mechanistic sort of way which inspectors have a habit of foisting on people . . . I use the opportunity to remind members of the importance of letting the office know what they are doing because I have to say some members are more conscientious in that task than others, and if we are to demonstrate exactly what we're doing it's very important that the office has some sort of record of the contributions which you are all making."

A committee would oversee the Authority's involvement in the inspection process.

Chief Constable: ". . . if the Authority would be happy to have a number of police officer police staff to join the group or to act as a consultant we would be very happy to provide that service as we have been inspected a little bit ourselves in the past."

Chaiman: "I think that we shouldn't have anything to fear from this except perhaps the inspectors rather than the inspection regime."

I made brief reference to the Chief Constable's experience of HMIC assessment in my entry for 26th July 2007, above.

11th April 2009 Today The Times online featured an article by Matthew Parris entitled, "The police must be policed - by politicians". A sub-heading read, "Criticising the constabulary was a no-go area for MPs. But look at the terrible mess this lack of censure has left us in." I was particularly interested in the reasons given for the author's dislike of "the idea of local elections for police boards or chiefs. They will either produce apathy or grandstanding attention-seekers."

I submitted a comment, after excising most of what I wanted to say because there is a 300-character limit on contributions:

The Chief Executive of Sussex Police Authority and the Chief Constable of Sussex would endorse Mr Parris's rejection of direct elections: they would be "more likely to attract candidates seeking to pursue personal agendas which . . . would swiftly bring them into conflict with chief constables."

Checking back a few hours later, I found that my response to the invitation to "Have Your Say" had not been printed. The 6,788-character article still only featured two responses from readers, totalling 507 characters. I must remember not to comment on Times articles in future.

24th July 2009 The Argus online ran a story, new to me, about a rise in police officer numbers. Two paragraphs interested me:

The number of full-time officers in Sussex Police rose by 3.9% - one of the largest increases of any force in England and Wales - from 3,075 in March 2008 to to 3,196 in March this year.

Nationally, officer numbers increased by 1.3% to 143,770 over the same period - but 16 of the 43 forces reported reductions in officers.

30th July 2009 Sussex Police Authority held another public meeting. My comment on it is included in a video by ggm11 on YouTube, entitled Sussex Police Authority and the retreat from Democracy.

11th October 2009 Today I accessed the SPA website, and found that the pages had been rewritten. Judging by the page I looked at, that for the Professional Standards Committee, the new look offered less information than was formerly available. The new page informed us that the Professional Standards Committee now had two "lead officers", so I emailed the first of them:

Having just accessed the revised SPA website for the first time, I was disappointed to find an apparent reduction in the information available on a subject in which I have a particular interest.

I looked at a page on The Professional Standards Committee. Under a link with that name appeared "06 September 2009", which I thought might refer to a meeting of the committee on that date. When I used the link, it merely downloaded the same URL as the PSC page, with "articleid=38" tacked on the end. The page content seemed unchanged.

The former website had working links to past meetings and associated agendas and minutes.

The reply from "Dan Steadman, Assistant Chief Executive", was as follows:

The point you make is reasonable. Whilst a library will develop, and very few people access them after 2 months on the site, I will discuss the issue of accessing old papers with our web developers.

I found this answer patronising and inadequate. I am not told whether there was a meeting on 6th September, and whether and when the agenda and minutes for it will be available. Presumably recent documents have not been binned, so the "library" is already in place. That a "lead officer" should "discuss" the contents of the page with web developers is symptomatic of the lack of authority in this Authority. Whether the defective web link will be remedied I will have to wait and see.

The right-hand column on the committee's web page also occasions disquiet. It starts, "THE PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS COMMITTEE is a public meeting . . . ."

Under that, eight current members of the committee are listed. Neither the Chairman nor the Vice-Chairman has been elected, though that is not mentioned. Under that list we have another list: "Forthcoming meeting dates are listed below with links to agenda items where available." Four future meetings are listed, with no links.

Under that we are told, "Sussex Police Authority meetings are web cast," though as far as I know committee meetings are not web cast, and although the committee is bizarrely described as "a public meeting", we are not told whether the meetings are held in public, and if so where, at what time, and to deal with what agenda.

21st October 2009 When I looked on the website for the webcast of the Authority's meeting dated 15th October, it was still not listed among "Recent Webcasts". I shall be checking again to see if there is to be a gap in the schedule: the last webcast was of a meeting on 30th July; the next may or may not be of a meeting on 11th February 2010.

If there is not to be a webcast of the October meeting, the excuse may be that used for Chichester meetings in the past, lack of facilities, though if that is the case the choice of venue for this meeting will have revealed the contempt the Authority has for the public.

Currently, the Authority's website starts with:

LATEST FROM THE AUTHORITY
University of Sussex hosts Sussex Police Authority
The latest Sussex Police Authority meeting has been held at the University of Sussex. Sussex Police Authority meets six times a year to discuss and scrutinise the three pillars of policing that Sussex Police serve Sussex by; keeping people safe, neighbourhood policing and best use of resources.

The wording might mislead the reader into thinking that the SPA were welcomed by the University on their merits, when in fact the University of Sussex Conference Centre is a commercial operation which welcomes delegates for the profit it can make from them.

We are not told whether the public were invited to this "public" meeting, and if so whether they had to pay the minimum Half Day Delegate Rate (no lunch) of £25.00, or whether taxpayers paid for their attendance, or whether mere observers were allowed in free.

As to "six times a year", the dates of the Authority 2009 meetings were, as far as I know, one date in February, 16th April, 30th July, and 15th October. I think that a meeting had been scheduled for 10th December, but according to the Authority's current website the next meeting is on 11th February 2010. Whether the pillars metaphor is ridiculous and the punctuation feeble I leave to the reader, if any, to decide.

Beneath what I have quoted above is a link to a page which repeats that stuff, and adds two short paragraphs:

For the first time the Authority are enjoying the conference facilities of the University of Sussex, a state of the art conference centre in the heart of the county.

The meeting is a chance for members to ask Senior Sussex Police Officers to report to the Authority, to show their successes and for the Authority to scrutinise improvements in service delivery.

The first of those paragraphs is deplorable because the Authority should not be using taxpayers' money to advertise a commercial enterprise, and the second because the wording exactly expresses what the Authority does, and is likely to do to an increasing extent under the chairmanship of the slimy Bush. Reports of failure and deterioration are not on the Authority's agenda.

Beneath the above quotation is a link to another page starting with "LATEST" and ending with "delivery", which adds another two paragraphs to what the previous two pages had already said.

The revised website is proving a model of incompetence.

3rd November 2009 I visited the SPA website again to check the dates of meetings and the availability of webcasts.

Under a list of links headed "Our Public Meetings" I clicked "The Authority Meetings," and accessed a page with links to "AUTHORITY MEETINGS" and seven committees. There was also a list headed "MEETING DATES", under which was the following:

Forthcoming meeting dates are listed below with links to agend (sic) items where available.
  • NPSC Meeting - 5th October 2009
  • Authority Meeting - October 15th 2009
  • Professional Standards Committee Meeting 28th October 2009

The page was obviously at least almost a month out of date, but even that poor performance does not account for the fact that not a single forthcoming meeting is actually listed. The Authority's contempt for the public, mentioned in my previous entry, is confirmed by this gross dereliction of responsibility and accountability.

Just above "MEETING DATES" was a link which said "Click here to view the web cast . . ." This led to a list of links to four "Recent Webcasts", none more recent than 5th October 2009, so it seems that two meetings in which I had particular interest - the Authority meeting of 15th October and the Professional Standards Committee of 28th October - are not to be webcast.

The web pages have a "POLICY DOCUMENTS" link which accesses a link called "Member Allowances and Expenses". Interested in what Authority members cost the taxpayer, I note the following:

Every member of the Authority is entitled to a basic allowance of £8,374 per annum . . . except for those members receiving Special Responsibility Allowances.

Special Responsibility Allowance [£ per annum]
(1) Chairman of the Police Authority 23,016
(2) Vice-Chairman of the Police Authority 16,742
(3) Chairmen of the following Committees:- . . .
   (b) Complaints Committee [sic] 9,568

6th November 2009 According to a report by the Chief Constable to the Professional Standards Committee, complaints against Sussex Police for the period 1 April 2008 to 31 March 2009 which were officially recorded by the police totalled one thousand and eleven, fifty of which were "substantiated", i.e. under five per cent of the total.

My experience of dishonesty and corruption in the Sussex force leads me to think that dishonesty must play a large part in the fact that 95.1% of the complaints recorded were not substantiated, the police being in most cases both offender and judge.

I was prompted to note this by an article published today by guardian.co.uk, which starts:

Scotland Yard riot squad faces calls to end 'culture of impunity'
Of more than 5,000 complaints against squad, less than 0.18% were upheld

Scotland Yard faced calls for an "ethical audit" of all officers in its controversial riot squad tonight after figures revealed that they had received more than 5,000 complaint allegations, mostly for "oppressive behaviour".

Details of all allegations lodged against the Metropolitan police territorial support group (TSG) over the last four years reveal that only nine – less than 0.18% – were "substantiated" after an investigation by the force's complaints department.

The figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, were described as evidence of a "culture of impunity" that makes it almost impossible for members of the public to lodge successful complaints against the Met's 730 TSG officers . . . .

To be continued