Police Service of Northern Ireland - a 'survival plan'?

Deputy Chief Constable Judith Gillespie** said: "This plan is a survival plan and hopefully it will prove to be our thriving plan, but without 'Service First' the business would fall over. We cannot continue the way we are going because the districts are haemorrhaging resources month on month through natural wastage." .. Belfast Telegraph, 11 December 2013

The DCC's words do sound rather alarmist but I drew attention to the deficit of constables just over four years ago.

Patten had recommended the deployment of 5932 constables in a 'peace-time' context but by December 2009 there were only 5472, a short-fall of 460. The PSNI management reaction to my intervention was to remove the Patten Established Figures from the monthly on-line returns; the monthly returns also went missing for a number of months. There appeared to be a miraculous recovery in April 2011 but it was probably just a typographical error. At present, there are 5313 constables representing a deficit of 619 on the Patten recommendation and that recommendation doesn't take account of the current political turbulence.

The number of reservists has been cut dramatically so this adds to the burden when additional resources are required. Patten also recommended the use of 2540 support staff. Their numbers had fallen to 2318 by December 2009 but are currently 2370.

Added 21 December 2013

Like every other public sector agency we must live within our budget.  We have £135 million of efficiency savings to make in this spending review period, and we are committed to delivering these through our ServiceFirst programme.  We are required to make £48m savings off our baseline costs by March 2015.  This will be very challenging and will inevitably change the way we deliver policing, both locally on the ground and in support functions.  More than 80% of our budget cost is our people and our police and staff numbers have reduced as recruitment has been frozen for the last two years.  But it is clear that there is a ‘bottom line’ of police resilience required to meet the challenges and threats we face.   Following a comprehensive resilience review, commissioned by the Chief Constable, which assessed the current and immediate future threats and risks for PSNI, it is clear that police numbers must be maintained at a minimum of 7000 police officers.  This will require political will to secure additional funding but the consequences for Northern Ireland and Great Britain in the absence of adequate police resilience are potentially severe. .. DCC Gillespie 22 October 2013

Chris Patten recommended a baseline of 7500 full-time officers in the context of 'peace time' operations but this has now been lowered to 7000 despite the DCC's report that 'attacks have included mortars, pipe bombs, shootings [and] booby trap IEDs' and 'paramilitary shootings and assaults continue, on both the Loyalist and Republican side, with 31 victims of shootings or beatings compared to 28 last year.  Terrorist groupings continue to rely heavily on organised crime to fund their activities.'

Added January 16, 2014

House of Commons - January 15, 2014

Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con): Patten recommended that in a peaceful situation, the PSNI should have a minimum of 7,500 officers. Given that Northern Ireland is not exactly in that peaceful situation, owing to paramilitary activity, is the Secretary of State concerned about the PSNI’s ability to recruit sufficient officers?

Mrs Villiers: I am grateful to the Chairman of the Northern Ireland Select Committee for his question and his important work on this issue. The current number of officers in the PSNI is 6,795. The Chief Constable*** recently told the Policing Board that the minimum number he needed to perform effectively was 6,963. It is important that consideration be given to how the shortfall can be dealt with, and as I have said, I remain optimistic about the ongoing discussions between the Department of Finance and Personnel and the Department of Justice about resolving that budgetary shortfall.

Whatever happened to those political spokespeople who advocated the adoption of the Patten proposals? Why do they now remain silent?

[** December 20, 2013 - DCC retirement announced]

[*** January 22, 2014 - CC retirement announced]

Department for Regional Development NI - Dear Minister

Model Publication Scheme

All public authorities are obliged under Section 19 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to adopt and maintain a publication scheme.  The idea of a publication scheme is to let everyone know what information will be automatically, or routinely, published by our Department.

To comply with the Act, this Publication Scheme sets out:

• what information we will make available, classified by type of information; and
• how you can access the information.

The table below sets out the what information is available through our publication scheme together with links where you will be able to get more information on how to access it.  Most of the information provided in our publication scheme will be freely available for downloading from the Website.  Other information, not available electronically, will be sent, or otherwise made available, by writing to us.

[Which is the big cheese?]

The failures and deficiencies I'm about to outline won't just apply to the Department for Regional Development but that's the department I'm most familiar with.

As I noted in September 2012, Stormont ministers are supposedly following HM Treasury best governance practice ie the Minister should be chairing Departmental Board meetings:

The present arrangement is a much looser one; the DRD Corporate Governance Framework illustrates the separation between the Minister and the independent/non-executive Board members. The Minister and his special adviser join senior civil servants for a Weekly Stocktake and the special adviser participates in the Weekly Business Review but both are absent from the monthly meetings of the Departmental Board.

According to the table mentioned above, minutes of senior-level meetings and reports and papers provided for consideration at senior-level meetings are published on the DRDNI website with a link to "Management & Policy Information - Board meetings"

1. The most recent monthly Board minutes were for 25 June 2013 and they were published following the Board meeting at the end of August.

2. The most recent Weekly Business Review was for 19 August 2013 and, instead of minutes, there's a list of virtually information free 'action points'.

3. There's no link to any reports which may have been considered at these senior-level meetings.

Why isn't the Department abiding by the terms of its publication scheme? Whatever happened to open and accountable government? Reports, of course, should be user-friendly.

WELCOME TO MOYLE DISTRICT COUNCIL ONLINE SERVICES

Moyle District Council has launched a new service; this service will permit users to apply for a dog licence on-line. I thought I'd take it for a test drive.

Obviously the first thing for a new user to do is to register:

I clicked the 'Register Here' link, filled in all the required boxes and clicked 'Submit':

Hmmm. If the system has my email address then perhaps it can supply a password - so I clicked 'Forgotten your password?'

Hmmm. There appears to be a glitch in the system!

PS I've blanked out the entries.

Added November 11

This just gets curiouser and curiouser! Even though I was unable to submit my registration - my address was already in use - and my request for a password - my address was not recognised - I have now received a password and  I was greeted by my first name. And they say miracles don't happen!

Ballintoy's Hidden History

BALLINTOY ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY

BALLINTOY'S HIDDEN HISTORY

WEBSITE

BLOG

On Saturday 2 February 2013 the society launched an exciting project called Ballintoy’s Hidden History, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund’s All Our Stories programme. Our project was established to explore and tell the story of three less well-known sites in the Ballintoy area, namely Templastragh Church, Ballintoy Castle and an eighteenth-century school at White Park Bay.

These were neglected aspects of our community’s heritage. Very little had been written about these important sites and there was a real danger that the stories local people had about them would be lost if they were not recorded. We were determined to rescue these hidden gems from obscurity and ensure they were given their rightful place in story of our local community.

From the outset, we realised that we needed to collect and record the stories and memories of local people, and present these alongside the information we would glean from archival sources and by surveying the surviving archaeology in our landscape.With the assistance of professional archaeologists from the University of Ulster at Coleraine and Queen’s University Belfast, we undertook a number of different activities between March and June 2013 to gather information about these sites.