Thames Valley Police and Crime Panel - Friday 13 March 2026, 10:30am - Buckinghamshire Council Webcasting

Thames Valley Police and Crime Panel
Friday, 13th March 2026 at 10:30am 

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  1. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
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  1. Khalid Ahmed - TVP Crime Panel Scrutiny and Support Officer
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  1. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
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  1. Khalid Ahmed - TVP Crime Panel Scrutiny and Support Officer
  2. Matthew Barber - PCC
  3. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
  4. Matthew Barber - PCC
  5. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
  6. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
  7. Matthew Barber - PCC
  8. Cllr Stephen Newton - Wokingham Council
  9. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
  10. Cllr Pamela Mackenzie-Reilly - Co-opted Independent
  11. Cllr Laura Gordon - Oxfordshire County Council
  12. Matthew Barber - PCC
  13. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
  14. Cllr Paul Trendall - Milton Keynes Council
  15. Matthew Barber - PCC
  16. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
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  1. Matthew Barber - PCC
  2. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
  3. Cllr Steve Bowles
  4. Matthew Barber - PCC
  5. Cllr Karen Rowland - Reading Borough Council
  6. Matthew Barber - PCC
  7. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
  8. Cllr Bethia Thomas - Vale of White Horse DC
  9. Matthew Barber - PCC
  10. Cllr Bethia Thomas - Vale of White Horse DC
  11. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  12. Matthew Barber - PCC
  13. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
  14. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  15. Cllr Laura Gordon - Oxfordshire County Council
  16. Matthew Barber - PCC
  17. Cllr Laura Gordon - Oxfordshire County Council
  18. Matthew Barber - PCC
  19. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
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  1. Matthew Barber - PCC
  2. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
  3. Cllr Pamela Mackenzie-Reilly - Co-opted Independent
  4. Matthew Barber - PCC
  5. Cllr Pamela Mackenzie-Reilly - Co-opted Independent
  6. Matthew Barber - PCC
  7. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
  8. Cllr Karen Rowland - Reading Borough Council
  9. Cllr Kate Gregory - South Oxfordshire District Council
  10. Matthew Barber - PCC
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  1. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
  2. Matthew Barber - PCC
  3. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
  4. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  5. Matthew Barber - PCC
  6. Cllr Karen Rowland - Reading Borough Council
  7. Matthew Barber - PCC
  8. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
  9. Cllr Karen Rowland - Reading Borough Council
  10. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
  11. Cllr Paul Trendall - Milton Keynes Council
  12. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
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  1. Matthew Barber - PCC
  2. Cllr Bethia Thomas - Vale of White Horse DC
  3. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
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  1. Matthew Barber - PCC
  2. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
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  1. Cllr Stephanie Steevenson - West Berkshire Council
  2. Matthew Barber - PCC
  3. Cllr Laura Gordon - Oxfordshire County Council
  4. Matthew Barber - PCC
  5. Cllr Laura Gordon - Oxfordshire County Council
  6. Matthew Barber - PCC
  7. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
  8. Cllr Stephanie Steevenson - West Berkshire Council
  9. Matthew Barber - PCC
  10. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
  11. Cllr Geoff Saul - West Oxfordshire District Council
  12. Matthew Barber - PCC
  13. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
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  1. Cllr Stephen Newton - Wokingham Council
  2. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
  3. Cllr Karen Rowland - Reading Borough Council
  4. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
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  1. Cllr Karen Rowland - Reading Borough Council
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  1. Matthew Barber - PCC
  2. Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent
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  1. Khalid Ahmed - TVP Crime Panel Scrutiny and Support Officer
  2. Webcast Finished

Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 0:00:00
Callate have we have apologies for absence please.

1 Apologies for Absence

Khalid Ahmed - TVP Crime Panel Scrutiny and Support Officer - 0:00:07
Yes Chair we've got a number of apologies. We've got apologies from
Councillor Eppes from Oxfordshire. We've got Councillor Gordon as substitute.
Welcome. Councillor Fawcett from Vale of Whitehorse with
Councillor Thomas as substitute. Welcome.
Councillor Mark Howard from Windsor and Main Head apologises
as does Councillor Morgan from Bookingshire.
Councillor Pinnell from Brightnell and Councillor Waite from Buckingham as well.
So there's quite a few there.
Thank you.

2 Declarations of Interest

Any declarations of interest please?
No, thank you.

3 Minutes

Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 0:00:42
In respect to the minutes of the last meeting which I unfortunately was not here for but was well chaired by Councillor Epps.
Please can I take those minutes as correct please.
Thank you.

4 Public Question Time

In respect to public questions, Khalid, I think we have some.
Khalid Ahmed - TVP Crime Panel Scrutiny and Support Officer - 0:00:59
Yes chair we've got a question from Councillor Ian Middleton from Charwell District Council.
He's sat down at the bottom of the table there chair.
Councillor Middleton.
All right.
Yeah, I can hear myself now.
Thank you.
I'm actually here in my capacity as a county councillor, Oxfordshire County Council.
I'm also the leader of the green group on Oxfordshire County Council.
So my question relates to Oxfordshire.
I trust the panel will agree with me that the reduction in speed limits across the county,
including the new 20 mile an hour zones are a vital part of the county council's ambition
to reduce injuries and deaths on our roads to as close to zero as possible as part of
the Vision Zero initiatives. I hope the panel will also acknowledge that if speed limits
are not enforced, especially on local roads, lives are being put at risk. If both those
assumptions are correct, why does Thames Valley Police not appear to be actively enforcing
these limits? Especially in areas like West Oxfordshire and Charwell where recent reports
from the joint operations unit showed that they actually reduced enforcement activity
in those areas even though data from previous months showed that speeding offences were
actually on the increase.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Barber, would you like to start first and then I will come back afterwards.
Matthew Barber - PCC - 0:02:59
Without which it would be boringly procedural.
I think it's a question to the panel, Chairman, but happy to offer some thoughts of course.
Thank you, Councillor Middleton.
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 0:03:12
The panel recognises that reduced speed limits include the new 20 mile an hour areas are
important part of the safety of the local authorities. Vision Zero approach is improving
road safety. We also agree that enforcement is essential if these limits are to be effective.
However, decisions about where and how speed enforcement is carried out are the operational
matters of Thames Valley Police and the Joint Operations Unit. The panel does not direct
enforcement activity but we do hold the Police and Crime Commissioner to account for how
the force response to the community concerns. We are aware that the reduced enforcement
figures you mentioned for West Oxfordshire and Chirrwell, and we will ask the Commissioner
to explain the reasons behind this and how the force intends to support compliance to
the new limits where their speeding is increasing. Thank you for raising this issue with respect
to the strong public concern.
Matthew Barber - PCC - 0:04:10
If you'd like me to add a few comments in response to Councillor Middleton of course.
So the introduction of a significant number of 20 mile an hour zones, particularly in
Austria, some of the local authorities across Thames Valley, but it's been largely an Oxfordshire
issue of course doesn't necessarily mean an increase in enforcement.
There was a level of enforcement that existed around 30 mile an hour zones and simply because
the local authority chooses to reduce a limit doesn't mean that there is, will be
or should be an increased level of enforcement. What actually I think is
important for most of our road users is that they understand and abide by those
speed limits. We don't have a system on any of our roads of excessive
enforcement that people are only obeying the limits because of enforcement being
there. Enforcement of course remains part of it. I've seen the figures about some
reductions in particular local policing areas around over a period of time. As
the Chairman has mentioned they're operational, I'm very happy to take that
back and look if there are any particular issues around those but
they're not issues that I'm particularly aware of. Tackling, speedling remains one
of the important areas, it's one of the, we'll talk about the fatal five, it's one
of those fatal five issues that policing continues to enforce on. We had, we do
through a range of fixed cameras, of mobile cameras and officer enforcement as well as
community speed watch. We've recently launched the Roads, Police and Tasking team which we'll
talk about a little bit more on one of the other agenda items which will in part do speed
enforcement. I would however emphasise as I've said to this panel before that speed
enforcement needs to be focused on where there is the greatest danger in order to save as
many lives as we possibly can. Looking at statistics which are probably about a
year out of date now from when I last looked them up across Thames Valley, around 600
people very sadly lost their lives on what might be considered local roads
those are 20, 30 and 40 mile an hour roads across Thames Valley. Within the same
period 1 ,600 people died on our faster roads. That is not to say we shouldn't
enforce on local roads and we should only enforce on others but it is to say
that there is a mix and policing needs to be led operationally by where there is the greatest risk.
It is also true and important to state that speeding is not the only thing that causes significant danger on our roads.
It is a factor. It is also a combination of other things, part of that fatal five.
And where speed is related in two fatal incidents and indeed serious incidents,
it is not always a case of illegal speed, i .e. over the limit.
We also have an issue that needs to be dealt with which is inappropriate speed.
Now that is much harder for policing to enforce,
we don't have the sort of variable speed limits you see in France that vary with the weather,
but there will be stretches of road that might be 50 or 60 miles an hour
and someone could be within the speed limit and nevertheless driving inappropriately
for the road conditions, whether that be the road layout or the weather or other circumstances.
so often we'll see that issue of speed and that I think plays into the fifth of the fatal
five that we come to talk about a little bit later in the agenda.
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 0:07:29
Thank you, Mr Barber. Mr Middleton, have you got anything you wish to say?
Yeah, I mean thank you to the panel and thank you to Mr Barber for that explanation. As
he rightly says, the statistics, certainly in Oxfordshire, are from what I can gather,
are quite out of date. I mean, I've got the last statistics I could see were from early
last year and we were seeing from January to March a decrease in enforcement of around
37 .7%. So I take the point that you made about speed not being necessarily a big part of
the issue of road safety. But it is statistically known and part of the reason why the 20 mile
mile an hour, the 20 is plenty proposals were put through certainly through the county council
because people are seven times more likely to survive an accident at 20 miles an hour
than they are at 30 miles an hour. And I think there's, you know, there's this
certainly in my view a feeling and I haven't seen in my division any enforcement of the
20 mile an hour zones and certainly in terms of mobile enforcement.
So, what would be useful to know is, first of all, to have some upstate statistics that
can be interrogated, certainly by the county council on a regular basis.
But also to know, I mean, I'm not going to I'm assuming the commissioner wouldn't have
this off the top of his head, but it would be useful to know how many enforcement notices
been issued for motorists exceeding 20 mile an hour limits certainly in local roads and
that would I think give us an indication of how seriously the Thames Valley Police are
taking enforcement of those speed limits.
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 0:09:19
Thank you. Mr Barbour will you be able to supply Mr Middleton with some figures in the
Distinguished?
Councillor Middleton is entirely correct I don't have those numbers off the top of my
Matthew Barber - PCC - 0:09:26
I'm sure they'll be recorded in the minutes and we can we can seek to find
those. I do however just want to emphasise the point because I think this
is one, it is an issue that causes lots of concern, I speak to lots of residents
around this. There is always going to be a capacity issue in terms of police
enforcement of anything, particularly around speeding and of course it is
there for the right reason to save lives and I wouldn't for a moment suggest it
doesn't matter. But we need to focus on where it is most significant. Now if you
have an area or a stretch of road which is your village has been 30 miles an
hour for the last 20 or 30 years and has a low record of incidents and therefore
has a low enforcement level because there hasn't been a particular need and
we can think of many places that may fall into that category. The fact that
the County Council lowers the speed limit has created some expectation from
the public that there will now be a greater level of enforcement that
suddenly the police will move in to enforce the new limit that has been
imposed. Yet there is nothing there that suggests that risk has increased greatly.
In fact the fact the introduction of the 20 mile speed limit generally suggests
the evidence suggests that the majority of road users will lower their speed as
a result so it may well have had the intended consequence of making making
that road safer. It is not inherently increased the risk on that road because
the because the limit is lower. That doesn't mean those limits shouldn't be
enforced or wouldn't be enforced and there are statistics that will show I
think over time as we've seen more 20 mile an hour zones there will be an
increase but I'm just really clear to people that just because a speed limit
has been reduced that doesn't automatically they'll mean there will be
a greater level of enforcement I think that's the expectation of some. Thank you
Cllr Stephen Newton - Wokingham Council - 0:11:13
Councillor Newton. Thank you chair. My own thoughts on this are that speed
limits should be appropriate for the situation the circumstances so in some
areas of course 20 mile an hour speed limits are correct but it does not mean
that that should be everywhere otherwise you'd have 20 miles or 10 miles an hour
speed limits on motorways and every road would have that as a limit so I
think that's the first point in terms of it should be an appropriate speed limit
I'm sure your council has looked at that and made those decisions advisedly. The
other thing is that drivers have a major responsibility here we have to drive if
drivers within the constraints of the road, of the conditions, and there's
nothing to make us have to drive at 20 miles an hour if that's unsafe. We should be
driving at a speed limit that is safe. So if that's icy and that's five miles an hour,
we should be doing it at that speed or whatever the circumstances dictate. So I
think there is an element here of actually trying to promote amongst the
drivers why compliance of this is appropriate and not just seek the
I'm not saying there shouldn't be
enforcement but driver awareness as to
why you have imposed this might help
change behaviours and therefore not
limit the need for enforcement.
I would also be concerned for my
residents that
if Thames Valley police did divert
resources away from other parts of
the area to try and support this
enforcement in Oxfordshire
and we all pay
as residents into the fund
and I would be quite concerned if more
that was being diverted to a particular area to try and address a new requirement at our expense.
So I think we do need to try and take a viewpoint as to what's in the best interest of all residents
within the area as all residents are paying. And I suspect also that if any council wishes to talk
to the police about some extra arrangements in their area, the police may well be able to
increase whatever it is you're looking for in return for some extra funding. So if you were
to go to them and say look we've got a particular fund for the next 10, 20, 30 years to try
and help this. They may well be prepared to do that. I'm not trying to say that we all
pay for our own vigilante police officers, but if there was a particular need that you
felt you wanted to support, then rather than it being subsidised for everybody else, then
that might be the council could fund that themselves. But thank you.
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 0:13:41
Thank you. I think that concludes on that topic. Sorry.
Thank you.
Cllr Pamela Mackenzie-Reilly - Co-opted Independent - 0:13:58
So yeah, I think I just wanted to flag in terms of that answer, you know, I do have
Cllr Laura Gordon - Oxfordshire County Council - 0:14:00
a consent just thinking of a particular village in my division where there has been a death
of a child and a number of serious injuries due to speeding, rat running cars, community
speed watch has recorded speeds of up to 70 miles an hour through the 20 mile an
hour zone and have repeatedly approached Thames Valley police asking for
enforcement and not had any response at all. So I am a little bit concerned to
hear that you know that this isn't you know even when we are seeing these
repeated incidents in the same place where we see a very clear pattern of
offending that is evidently creating danger, including fatalities to children.
And yet we're still not seeing that enforcement. So I just, you know, what do
we need to do in order to demonstrate the need for that enforcement?
I'm very happy if you'd like to let me, apologies I don't know which division you cover, but feel
Matthew Barber - PCC - 0:14:55
free to get in touch outside the meeting. I'm very happy to raise that rather than
doing specifics here. I think there was always a risk and you know when
when there's any loss of life on our roads that is incredibly sad and you've clearly had experience
of that there and I don't doubt what you're saying that that incident in itself may well be speed
related. There are a number of other incidents that I have come across where people have assumed
that there is a speed issue in there and actually the cause of the incident may well have been
someone driving inebriated, you know whether that's drink, drugs, one of the other issues.
They may have been driving at speed as well, but there are...
Sorry?
I completely agree, but the methods of enforcement are very different.
Sticking a camera up doesn't detect someone who is driving inebriated, and that's why
we have the tasking team which is being introduced, which actually looks at a much more holistic
picture around enforcement because there are those other risks on our roads and I
don't and I would strongly advise of you not going away from this meeting
suggesting I think that speeding is okay but I've said in this meeting before that
if we could do if I could wave a magic wand and remove everybody from our roads
who is taking drugs drinking using a mobile phone behind the wheel and the
average speed went up by five miles an hour I think I'd probably comfortable
with the increased risk of the speed because there are some very dangerous people out there
who are putting people at risk. Sadly I don't know about the incident in your division of course,
but very happy to take that outside the meeting. Thank you and one last question please before we
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 0:16:36
move on to the next topic which will include the same subject. It's a very quick one for the PCC.
The Commissioner, you've kindly explained to the committee in a previous meeting about how the
Cllr Paul Trendall - Milton Keynes Council - 0:16:45
speed limits are enforced particularly with regard to the 20 mile an hour limits,
principally that it has to be a warranted police officer who does it and
therefore they have to be redeployed from doing something else to do that.
We get that. Is there any likelihood or chance in the future do you think, and
we're not asking you to make a promise, but do you think, where those powers can be
devolved down to PCSOs so we don't take a policeman off something else, domestic
violence, robbery, burglary etc. and make them stand by the side of the road, could
Matthew Barber - PCC - 0:17:24
we not just empower the PCSOs to do it? So yes, there are already
routes for PCSOs to do some speed enforcement. There are also forces, and
it's a conversation I've had with the Chief Constable and it's one that is
under review. I'm aware for example Greater Manchester Police have traffic
PCSOs. They were a new thing when I bumped into a PCSO with his sort of
light blue livery on his uniform, but a white cap when I was in Manchester a little while
ago. I had a chat with him about that, and it's one of those things that I brought back.
So I think there are those opportunities. Of course, PCSOs are doing other duties as
well, so there's always a draw somewhere. But I do think we need to be a bit more imaginative
about it. I do also think that we need to, as I say, and we will talk about the tasking
team, look at the holistic picture of enforcement, which can be about speed and can be about
lots of other things as well.
And I think the evolution of the tasking team,
they are new, they are relatively small,
but I'm optimistic about the work that they are going to do.
And I think if that proves really effective,
then I think an expansion of that team
can do a whole range of enforcement,
which will make our roads much safer.
Thank you.
I will move on to the next topic,
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 0:18:42
which is the same thing.
We'll work with any more of the questions.

5 Road Safety Partnership strategy and Operation Spotlight

Mr Barber, the PCC Road Safety Strategy and Operations Spotlight.
Matthew Barber - PCC - 0:18:55
So I'll keep the introduction brief, Chairman, as I promised to you I would earlier on.
There are two things I wanted to mention particularly.
So the Road Safety Strategy we've talked about at this meeting before, but just a bit of
a recap.
And the key bit there is really partnership around the partnership working with all of
you as local authorities for those of you who represent local authorities around the table.
And that is looking at a range of things. One key area of work which is very live at the moment,
I'm chairing a meeting on Wednesday of next week to cheque on progress around this, is about data.
So we have lots of data systems for monitoring road safety around all of our respective local
authorities in Thames Valley. Policing has some systems. We are now moving to a new system for
Thames Valley Police from the top of my head,
I think it's called CRASH,
probably either a very appropriate
or inappropriately named data system,
but it's used by a lot of other police forces.
TPP and Hampshire weren't those forces,
and we've now got them up to moving to that system
because it is recognised as being much better
for that analysis of data.
But there's a lot of stuff out there
that local authorities do.
Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire
is the geographically biggest local authorities I know,
doing some really interesting work
with the publicly available telematics, the data that's available from Google Maps and Waze and all those sorts of things.
But that's very expensive, it's very high level.
What we are hoping to do through our data work is to identify what are the key bits of data
that all of the local authorities, the police, fire service and ambulance, need to improve road safety across Thames Valley.
And where there are gaps in our ability to obtain that, usually by cost,
it might be one of the smaller authorities can't afford to do it, or even individually, even the large ones can't afford to do it.
Can we get some collective buying power as Thames Valley with the potential for the OPCC to be the
commissioning authority to buy some of that big data with the cost shared amongst partners and hopefully
even trying to secure some additional funding from the DFT for that, because I think there are some really exciting
stuff in the world of road safety where you could look at that data around
live time traffic which will show you where you're seeing harsh braking for
example. You might not have a history of accidents on that stretch of road yet
but you might well be able to spot the dangerous junction because there's
suddenly a whole load of rapid braking on this bit of road and we can look
at that and say does that need police enforcement? Is that about speed? Does it
need a change in road layout because actually the road junction is just a
dangerously designed junction. It's a long way off but
conversations are ongoing with all of your councils who are highways
authorities about that and I've got a meeting on Tuesday. That's one of the
really important bits of the partnership work that goes on. The other bit I wanted
to highlight which is touched on is the road policing tasking team. I've
It is a small team. What's key to their activity is they are written off from doing other policing duties.
Our problems with road policing have been that roads policing will set out to do an enforcement operation
and then there'll be a crash on the A34 or the M40 and suddenly everybody gets called away to deal with that.
All there's a request for roads policing support to make an arrest from local policing or whatever
and nobody goes and helps with that job.
This team are dedicated, short of the absolute disaster that you can never
rule out in policing, they are dedicated just to doing that enforcement
stuff. So they are much more agile, they're using some different tactics,
they're using some unmarked motorbikes and marked motorbikes, a mix of other
marked and unmarked vehicles looking at enforcement of speed and enforcement of
drink and drug, looking at those who are not insured and taxed because we know
that there is a strong correlation between those who are uninsured,
untaxed on our roads and those who are committing other criminal, either their
their driving standards are similarly poor or they're committing other
criminal activity and we see a correlation. That's a really useful
tactic and we've had some support from the Motor Insurance Bureau to fund that
work. So I would hope as I mentioned earlier that we will see over the coming
year, 18 months, some really significant impacts in terms of
enforcement, yes around speeding but also around other areas of road
enforcement and if that is the case I think it certainly adds to the
argument for increasing the results in that team should results be available.
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 0:23:39
Thank you. You obviously said the team was inaugurated on the 16th of February.
They performed two days of tasking at Bicester starting on the 16th and 17th I
think. I will read out a list of what they achieved during that time and I
it affects everybody because I think all these people or this side things I read out will probably
be to commission speeding offences and other offences as well. Four people arrested for drug
driving, 12 for immigration offences, 15 vehicles seized for no licence, insurance or tax,
82 vehicles prohibited due to being unroadworthy, 88 untaxed, 34 overweight,
18 no seatbelts, 22 with tyre defects, 8 for mobile phone offences, 18 for registration
plate offences, 18 for window tint offences, 14 for dangerous condition, 15 for lighting
offences, 2 for no MOT and 2 for no operators licences. That was two days of multi -agency,
including trading standards, DVLA, fire service, everybody else, I would guarantee
that most of those people would probably be speeding as well. So the impression
has been made there by the tasking group there. I was just going to say listening
Cllr Steve Bowles - 0:25:10
to that sort of litany of offences and that it was just two days in one
specific area I'd find that perhaps not surprising but pretty scary if you took
the whole of the Thames Valley as a whole if you had the resources which
obviously you haven't you'd need an army of people to do it if you're able to do
that across the whole of the Thames Valley I just dread to think what the
numbers would be the point is this is just an eight -hour shift probably or
nine -hour shift and just to pick on a few of those offence types if you like
because I think it does, and I stress again,
Matthew Barber - PCC - 0:25:42
it's not that I think the speeding stuff doesn't matter,
but it's about where the wider risk is.
So one of those excessive tints on windows
that I was looking at, I was there when they stopped
a lady in a very nice, expensive electric Mercedes,
probably not your typical criminal type
that you would have expected, but frankly,
the level of tints on her driver's side windows.
Yeah, if you're, it's fine, it's a nice sunny day,
but if you're pulling out of a junction at night
and don't see a cyclist or don't see someone
on a motorcycle because of those levels of tints,
you will kill someone.
And these are not people who necessarily set out
to commit a criminal offence
or deliberately endanger someone,
but these are the things that will lead
to someone dying on our roads.
the unsafe loads, the weight restrictions,
they sound really boring and bureaucratic.
But frankly, if you've got a vehicle behind you,
which is overweight by an extra tonne
than it's supposed to have,
it's stopping distance is massively extended.
And if it's got an unstable load,
that will go all over the carriageway.
And we have seen people killed on our roads
because of those sorts of incidents.
So there is some real professionalism
from certainly the commercial vehicle unit
who do a lot of stuff around unsafe loads
and weights and it sounds really boring and bureaucratic and it's not something that captures
people's attention but they are really very risky vehicles left unchecked.
Thank you. Anybody? Karen?
Cllr Karen Rowland - Reading Borough Council - 0:27:20
Thank you, Chair. And I really appreciate you drawing that information forward that
kind of gives us a bit of a launch to a few other questions. I mean, I've got two questions
actually. The first one in regards to that, do you feel that currently within the TVP
structure that we have the resource available to really tackle all of the things that were
brought up, certainly in the very valid question that were brought up earlier, and then launching
into this. Do you feel that is properly resourced and what actually would that take? That's
about Op Turbo, if you could just,
and just a reminder for public that might be listening,
that is around e -scooters, e -peds, things like that,
and if you could just give me a brief oversight
as to how that's being employed.
So I apologise for the two -part questions,
they're entirely separate, but thank you.
That's all right, Councillor, you always seem to get in
with at least two -part questions,
Matthew Barber - PCC - 0:28:24
so I'm used to it, that's fine.
Your first bit was actually itself in two parts,
whether you meant to or not.
You said if we got the right structures,
then we've got the right resources and I think they are two separate things. I do
actually think the structures, particularly now we've got the tasking
team in place, are pretty good. Having the Joint Operations Unit across two
police forces gives some capacity and some scale. Having the tasking team,
having our safer roads team allows for some specialism. Having that safer, the
commercial vehicles unit that I mentioned, there's some really good
specialism within there and so I think they are structured quite well. Would we
Would we like more resource? Yes. And I think that is a slightly separate question because you could have plenty of people and put them in the wrong place.
Roads policing does more than just roads policing. It spends a significant amount of its time assisting other parts of the force in making arrests, for example, which is, I think, a good use of resources.
But would we like to have more, undoubtedly, we spoke at the, I think our last panel meeting was when we were looking at the budget.
So we've talked about some of those constraints and some of the pressures
because of the desire to put more into neighbourhood that it creates elsewhere in the force.
So realistically, we're probably just not able to put more into it at the moment,
but I do think the structures are sound.
In terms of e -bikes and e -scooters,
I'm just trying to pull up, I'm not sure if I'll be able to get the latest statistics for you,
but that work continues and there are several parts to it.
There is the obvious enforcement,
I'm looking at some new methods of enforcement,
so working with a company called Selecta DNA,
who's done a lot of tool marking stuff at the moment,
not rolled out massively,
but we're trialling some of the stuff
where you can, some of the forces done,
where you can spray someone
as they're scooting away from you,
which reduces, or potentially reduces,
the need for the high speed and dangerous chase,
which can endanger the public,
and indeed the rider and police officers,
because you can then identify someone.
So that person who's covered in,
that they've got a face covering on,
you can't easily identify them
and they try to make off from a police officer.
Once you've sprayed someone with this stuff
who's got micro dots in it,
they can easily be identified and actually you can say,
no, you definitely were the person
who was running away from us 10 minutes ago
when you've caught them around the corner.
So trialling some things like that
because the physical issue of laying hands
on some of those people can be challenging.
There are several bits of the wider policy area of that I've been engaged with, some with the Motorcycle Industry Association
and with some fellow PCCs and those in government around the rules and the regulations.
So e -bikes are perfectly legal until they're modified illegally.
at the moment it's not illegal to buy or sell a kit to modify one.
So again the legislation is out of date and needs to be looked at.
We probably haven't got time here to go into all of that but there is,
my hope is that we can, with industry, with government, come up with a sort of five or
ten point plan about this is what should actually happen because the world of micromobility,
I think they call it in the jargon, which covers all of those areas, is very new.
The legislation in and out of date, certainly in the case of e -scooters, there's lots of trials
that have gone on in some of our towns. My personal view is it's been going on for years,
we've done the trial, we know the risks, we know the benefits, it's now time for the government
to get a grip of it and say, well, okay, having done the trials, this is what we're going to do.
And I think there are some areas where we need to legislate to ban aspects of that.
In my view, if you're using an e -scooter, it should be treated like a motor vehicle,
which is what it is.
You should be able to get insurance for it.
You can't, that's the bit that prohibits people at the moment, but you should have to wear
a helmet.
They should be limited to one person on all that sort of thing.
They should be on the roads only.
You best do that by actually regulating it and banning certain bits.
And then there's other areas around the supply chain that also need to be looked at.
But police enforcement continues with seizures.
Thank you.
Councillor Newton, please.
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 0:32:37
Okay.
Councillor Thomas, please.
Cllr Bethia Thomas - Vale of White Horse DC - 0:32:46
Hi, thank you. I just wanted to go back to, I was going to ask a question earlier but
I didn't really get a chance and it's more of a discussion over the 20 mile per hour
and sort of seeing it more holistically. I know you've been against it in the past but
You've also wanted to work with the County Council.
And I would like to go forward,
and I know I'm only a sub here,
but I would like to go forward making sure that
that spirit of,
yeah, holistic approach working together
for the good of Vision Zero
or the now, was it, Fatal 5, is really recognised and that the 20 mile per hour
scheme that was rolled out is not just about 20 mile per hour it's about
reducing speeds right across. I was just looking at various previous news
articles and things it's about reducing speeds on fast roads. I know resources
are limited but we're talking about getting people like Councillor Gordon said that there are major
major hazards there and we really do need to make sure that's happened now part of the 20 mile per
hour scheme has reduced areas in around me on the A417 and it will continue to do that because that
is the um just the general approach now as you know and I hope that we can work together and and not
um sort of be negative towards one another's approaches to this. I'm all for working
Matthew Barber - PCC - 0:34:42
together that's why we set up that um that road safety forum I mean in terms of the 20 mile an hour
I agree with what was said earlier,
that whatever the speed limit,
it is best achieved by the driver understanding the road,
and it being intelligible and understandable
to the vast majority.
And then police enforcement is about
those who are the outliers,
the ones who egregiously break it.
I think there's a really interesting point, actually,
about the 20 mile an hour and the theory behind it.
I've seen some of this, I think, in reports
from Oxfordshire County Council officers from memory,
and I think it is very true, that if you take an area which was previously a 30 mile an hour
area and the average speed was about 35 in reality because people edged up a little bit,
and you make it a 20 mile an hour zone, then the average speed becomes about 25.
And I absolutely get that logic and I can probably see that from my own experience
and that undoubtedly reduces the speed and makes people safer.
That happens without the need for additional excessive enforcement,
because that is about the change in behaviour you want to achieve.
Now, that doesn't mean we shouldn't enforce
when people are outrageously breaking the limits,
but I guess my point is we were never in a position
where we were able to, or even necessarily for it to be desirable,
to enforce all of those 30 areas everywhere.
Take your patch of Farringdon.
We were never able to and never have enforced a 30 mile an hour.
Therefore, creating that as a 20 doesn't mean there should suddenly be massive enforcement.
But what actually having the 20 is probably already reduced the average speed and made the road safer.
And therefore we should then work collectively I agree to focus that that enforcement on where you get the most egregious outliers.
As Councillor Gordon has highlighted there may well be some of those and I'm very happy to take those back to policing.
Cllr Bethia Thomas - Vale of White Horse DC - 0:36:38
once we have lowered things and created a new starting point,
we can then look at where we need to enforce more,
whether it be average speed cameras, as you know,
as one of my hot topics on the A420,
or other means, but there are issues.
and you recognise it because obviously the fifth of the fatal five now also involves speeding so
it's like speeding overtaking it is I mean I know that's more reckless but it is also about speed
and I know that that is a huge issue with my patch. Thank you. Councillor Wilson please.
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 0:37:27
Thank you Chairman. One of the favourite questions I get asked as a Councillor is who's responsible
for speeding and I say the drivers. Quite frankly that is it, you know, and I don't
think we can get away from that point that it's easy to try and point the finger at other
people and say you should be doing this, you should be doing that, but I do take that point.
That's not my question, I just wanted to make that point. I don't have sub -parts, I have
three different questions if that's okay. Road safety partnership, I think it's really
interesting Mr. Barber you talk about the benefit of scale and the big data
and how that can work to the benefit I think there's also a bottom -up community
and as we see local authorities highway authorities getting bigger and
bigger actually there is an opportunity to bring town and parish councils into
this partnership and in reality as those bigger authorities have less and less
money, Town and Parish Councils may be the only incremental source of funding that can
help contribute to getting local and you very specifically related to a specific road junction
or a particular piece of road. So I wondered, my first question really is, to what extent
does the road safety partnership bring town and parish councils into the
equation because I know locally that's the only way I can get anything done.
Bucks Highways have no money. The police resources are limited but I have to use
and work through the parish council to be able to get additional road safety
measures in place so the extent to which they can be brought into the
partnership and particularly things like vehicle -activated signage, mobile
vehicle -activated signage and that requires working with the highway's
authority and potentially the police as well. So that's my first point. Second
point and perhaps related to that I have three permanent cameras in my ward but
only one of them is operational and the extent to which they operate as a
deterrent, but of course over a period of time, users of the roads get to know which
ones are not being maintained. And how is that an area that will ever be revisited to
bring any of those back into service? And I probably understand that the recommissioning
costs of those are expensive. And then the third area, and I think is extraordinarily
prevalent is drug driving, and particularly where you've got multiple occupancy in vehicles.
You can go walk down any road now and the smell of cannabis coming from vehicles is
just unbelievable.
And the extent to which that issue,
and you probably used to be able to say,
well, drink driving, it's probably mostly in the evening
or the morning after the night before,
but drug driving is throughout the day
and it's extraordinarily prevalent.
And I just don't know if enough work is being done
to try and address that in terms of awareness,
particularly in those multiple vehicles.
So sorry, three -
No, they're all three really good ones.
I'll try and get through as quick as I can.
So the partnership doesn't directly involve town and parish councils.
Matthew Barber - PCC - 0:41:09
There's about 700 parishes across the Thames Valley,
so just corralling everybody is a challenge.
However, there is some expectation that through the local authorities that are there,
they are able to share up and down around that.
I take West Berkshire actually as a really good example,
where West Berkshire have been really proactive around Community Speedwatch.
They supported a lot themselves.
So actually the conversations we have with the officers at West Berkshire, I know there's a really close link to the communities that are doing it.
And I always hold at those meetings, I hold West Berkshire up as the example of if other councils were as proactive in Community Speedwatch for example, that would be really helpful.
We do have the Community Speedwatch itself funded directly by my office or through local authorities.
the SIDS, what there's all sorts of names for them. So yesterday I went
through applications for my community fund which is some of the money seized
from criminals, some of it as you'll see in the report comes from seized vehicles
which have then been auctioned which puts money back into the pot. A
proportion and I can't remember what the numbers were when we settled on it
yesterday afternoon but a proportion of that and not insignificant amount is
going to Town and Parish Councils who have asked for funding for those sorts of
things. There is a really interesting point that came out of that which is
trying to get some consistency and again the economies of scale.
So I could pick two random parishes that have applied for money for vehicle
activated signs. One of them is asking for £12 ,000 for
one sign, another one asks for £6 ,000 for two
signs. Where are you buying your signs from?
So there's a little bit of saying well actually okay you might have a gold
standard one here but can we find a silver standard that
will fit do everybody and maybe we can find a way of buying in bulk and
distributing those because that yeah that's brilliant that's money that
doesn't come from the public purse it's taken off criminals so we're doing some
of it and following yesterday's meeting that point about the economies of scale
is very much front and centre. Permanent cameras there is an investment programme
but it is frankly slow because they're quite expensive and some of it I know is
delayed and I wouldn't like to say for your specific ones obviously there is a
new version of some of the fixed cameras which is being released by one of the
manufacturers early this year. I know we're in March now but I think it's
early in the new financial year so I've actually allocated some money to fill a
bit of the shortfall for those but I know roads and policing were looking to
hold that over to the next financial year because there's no point buying the
old model now when in a couple months time they can buy the new model. However
I am a little personally a little bit sceptical about the benefits of the
fixed cameras versus some of the new technology we've got now. Councillor
Thomas has mentioned average speed cameras, they're much more expensive but
actually where we've now got a much greater ability to do mobile cameras etc
and a fixed camera will slow people down for about 200 yards and unless
there's a really good reason to try and control that 200 yards that can't be
done by some other bit of road design for example then generally I think we're
better off having the added element of jeopardy, if you like, of moving some of
that around because even if it's working, everybody knows it's there, all that
happens is everybody drives over the limit up to it, they slam their brake on
increasing a risk back there and then they accelerate away from it. We haven't
solved the problem, we've just displaced it. It was a technology of its day, I
think in my view, but we are putting, we are still doing those anyway because
it's not my choice about whether we put them in or not. Drug driving, absolutely
horrendous. There was a video on social media yesterday, some people may have
seen it, if I can find it I'll share it with Khalid, of someone who was arrested
in Avon and Somerset. I mean it's quite shocking, he wasn't able to have a
conversation with the police officer arresting him, he was that out of it and
you know, horrendous state this guy was in. It's one that makes social media but
this is not an uncommon occurrence. We've got a real problem around the
legislation and the ability to test.
So there's two areas.
We have the transport minister visiting
the road tasking team yesterday actually,
and I couldn't go meet her,
but I know one of the assistant chief constables
raised these issues with her.
There are two parts of it.
One is the sensitivity of the testing.
So all testing has some sort of sensitivity.
When we were doing those COVID tests,
you could have a little bit of COVID
and it's not gonna come up with a line
because everything has that.
So everything has a sensitivity.
With alcohol, that's easy
because there is a limit, you set the sensitivity at a limit and if you're over the limit then you
go and have a medical test, you have a proper blood test back at a police station. With cannabis,
cocaine, those drugs that can be tested at the side of the road, of course there isn't
any limit that you can have in your blood because they're all prohibited substances, but the test
has to have a line somewhere for it to work and so you end up with a situation, and I've seen it
myself where the rules as they are at the moment indicate that someone probably has
been smoking cannabis as an example and it shows there is something there but it's
not over the line enough to warrant an arrest for driving under the influence of that substance.
So the most you could do is a possession offence type thing.
It's a difficulty around how you overcome that but it's one that we've raised, it's
not a new issue, I think the Home Office and Department of Transport are aware of it.
but so the tests that officers have got on the side of the road are good, they're improving,
but they don't always do what we really want them to do. There's then also an added problem these
days of medical cannabis, which is surprisingly easy to get hold of. Whether it's justified or
not is another matter, there's a whole wider debate there, but of course there is a medical
defence event for those who are using cannabis behind the wheel because there isn't a legal limit
set for the level of cannabis that you can have in your blood when you're driving because it's just
illegal someone can say well yes I did have I had I have had got some cannabis
in my system but look I've got prescription I've got off the internet
somewhere and it then becomes a job for the police to try to disprove that it's
just another another bit of a defence which you wouldn't have if it was
alcohol so you're right it's a it's a problem it's a growing problem there are
those I would pick those two particular things that I've picked up you know
having been out of roads policing officers they are known issues and I
I think the Home Office Department of Transport are aware of them and I think there is the hope of some changes around it, but these things never happen quickly.
So I think that's where the problem is around some of the legislation and the rules around it as much as the ability or the desire of police officers to enforce.
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 0:47:50
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 0:47:54
I was just going to come back and say whilst we've got the cabinet member for Communities in the meeting whether or not we could do something through town and parish councils about road safety.
and get that communication out so thank you. Thank you. Councillor Gorton for the last question please.
Yeah so this one is actually a question that Councillor Epps asked me to ask
Cllr Laura Gordon - Oxfordshire County Council - 0:48:11
around the road safety partnership and particularly engagement around issues such as
locations of bus stops and transport to busses and so on where and I've had I've had issues with this
myself but I think not to the same extent where we have a bit of a problem
where you know the the police will come in and say this bus stop this location
is unsafe this informal stop is unsafe okay fine therefore the other you know
but but also it's unsafe to walk down the road to the next bus stop and
therefore we wouldn't recommend people doing it which okay that's also fine
however that does leave a situation where by default people are going to end
up doing the less safe option because people do still need to get the bus and if we take
away one unsafe option but the only option that is remaining to them is even less safe
then that is what they will end up doing and so just saying in an email well we wouldn't
recommend that they do it is not an enormously helpful response even if it is true and therefore
this sort of I think the concern that we have is that this sort of partnership working is
not really delivering the outcome we need, which is all to sit down together
and go okay what is the least unsafe way that we can enable these people to get
on the bus. And I think so I guess if you could comment on you know I guess how
that how you could tell that seems from your perspective and also what would you
how would you like to work together to improve this because I think I can
completely understand how these officers have got to that position like this is
unsafe, that's unsafe, that's also unsafe, great they're all unsafe but that
does mean that in the meantime we've got people doing what everyone agrees is the worst option,
walking down a very dark, undeclared road that's going at 60mph because they need to
get the bus and you can't take that away.
I think you're absolutely right. So it's not something that Councillor Gant has raised
Matthew Barber - PCC - 0:50:08
in the forum but it's a really, really important point around the, if I take it away from bus
stops but it's a really good example and to the like the technical interaction
between highways officers and Thames Valley Police in terms of the advice
they give. Very happy to take that as an example away about where and we've had
we've had a similar thing actually about the about the speed limit stuff but yeah
ultimately those decisions are for the council to make and advice is being
sought but I think the advice is sometimes a bit too binary rather than as
say a discussion and I would be really keen to try and improve that and I will
bring that up through our next forum so we've got the local authorities and the
and the roads policing team there about how we how we solve that problem because
I think it might be a case of moving away from some of the email advice and
even if we haven't got people co -located face -to -face having having those things
by a Teams meeting because if you're discussing it you get that to and fro
Whereas if you're just exchanging email advice, you say no.
I think it's also a really good example of where,
this is the value of the politicians in the room,
that the world is not binary, is it?
And the problem is you ask the experts something,
you look at a lot of stuff around road safety,
the safest thing to do is just not to have any vehicles
on the road, that would be great.
But we don't live in that world,
so we have to address some level of risk alongside it.
It's the same with your bus stops.
You can't cut communities off from public transport,
so how do we mitigate those risks as best as possible?
I think it may well be through a more face,
if not literally face -to -face,
a virtual face -to -face discussion around those issues
rather than it being email exchanges.
Happy to take it up at the next forum meeting.
If I could just come back very quickly,
partly because I know Gareth will definitely ask me,
Cllr Laura Gordon - Oxfordshire County Council - 0:51:56
what would be your, you know, so you're in that situation,
you've reached this impasse over email,
what would you like us to do
in order to take it to that next step?
Concretely, specifically?
Matthew Barber - PCC - 0:52:10
So I'm really comfortable, and this obviously applies to any local authority,
if anyone's got an issue that they don't think they're getting a helpful answer,
unless you're the right answer, because that's not my job,
but if they're not getting the cooperation from the TVP,
feel free to get in touch with my office, I can always ask a few questions.
But ultimately, in those situations, I would also say it's the highways authority that are sovereign.
So do you know what, if the police say, well, we don't like that,
where are you going to put that?
Because there's a safety issue there.
That may well be factually true, as you say,
and it's perfectly within the gift of Oxfordshire County Council.
So we've taken that advice into consideration
and we're coming up with a different decision
because we balanced X risk against Y benefit.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Can we move on please now to item six on the agenda,

6 OPCC/TVP Complaints and Misconduct Data Report

Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 0:52:50
the complaints and misconduct data report, Mr Barber.
Thank you, Chairman.
Matthew Barber - PCC - 0:52:57
This reasonably lengthy report sets out some of those,
hopefully answers some of the questions
that the panel will have had around some of the processes and the complexities around
it.
Also, looks at a few snapshots of data, which I think show, perhaps not surprisingly, because
we've touched on this before, that the biggest volume of complaints that we see from the
public around delivery of duties and it's, there's within that the failings of offices
when those happen and then they also pick up the complaints of we don't like
the answer we got and that's not to dismiss those because they're a mix of
them but that's the category in which most of those will fall. The other
very serious issues around misconduct, discreditable conduct etc are thankfully
as we would expect significantly lower so those other categories become a bit
of a catch -all and there is some work that looks a little bit more about
what's within those categories and we've seen over time, I think a couple of years ago,
the biggest sub -category of those would have been failing to update victims.
We've seen some improvements on that with the victim's portal, etc.
and a real effort to push officers to do more in terms of updating their victims.
I think within that it's now probably shifted more to victims perceiving a
lack of empathy in the updates they're getting. So they're getting the updates
and they're not necessarily as helpful as people would want so that shows perhaps
part of the journey. The report also obviously touches on the latest HMIC
report into PSD which frankly is very disappointing to say the least.
I won't, there's some detail in there. I think it's important to note the adequate on vetting,
I think is, I think all of the other Forces who were inspected at the same time got a requires
improvement or an inadequate around vetting. There are areas of requires improvement for
professional standards and for counter -corruption. I mean members cannot clearly ask me what
questions they like. I've suggested Chairman that we perhaps come back to the bulk response to
the inspection at a later meeting because this came in about a week beforehand.
There will be a formal response from the force and from my office so there are a number of
recommendations that we're looking through on this. There are I think the biggest area of
interest for me and for my office particularly around the complaints and misconduct issues.
Our members might recall we looked about 18 months ago at moving to a different complaints model
within Thames Valley Police. I sought some assurance from professional
standards and they assured me that they could manage the changing
regulations that were coming in under the existing arrangements. We've tried
that, they've got required improvement from HMIC. Clearly that's a course to
revisit that decision. Now we need to properly look at that in slow time to
say well if we'd have made those changes would it have addressed the things that
HMIC have picked up because they're not all necessarily aligned. But I think that
That is an area for me to look at in the future.
So you've got the report, hopefully it sets out some useful, interesting details about
the wider issue.
Happy to pick up things that people want on the HMIC inspection if you wish, but I suggest
we'll come back with a fuller response about what we're actually doing to the recommendations
once the force have had a chance to look at them in detail.
Thank you.
Pamela or Mott?
Thank you.
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 0:56:45
yeah you kind of preempted my question by saying could we come back to it but I
Cllr Pamela Mackenzie-Reilly - Co-opted Independent - 0:56:51
do feel that the inspectors identified failures in complaint handling which
which we know you said it's yes disappointing the police have said well
yeah we're going to improve I think it's not it's not unreasonable to say what
are they going to do differently now and can we just have some assurances that
you are going to get onto them to make sure that they come back with some
concrete, not concrete this is what we're going to do differently we're going to
put it in place we expect to see improvement we're committed to it
rather than just yeah yeah we note it and we're going to do some things
differently. What what? Okay that's fair and I'll do my best to to give you my
Matthew Barber - PCC - 0:57:36
initial thoughts the reason I say we'll come back is because this report came in
about a week before the papers for this meeting were published and we do need to
get into the weeds of it a little bit to work out.
So one of the issues where the HMIC picked up,
which I'm perhaps not entirely surprised by,
is about the timeliness and the speed to respond.
Now, that is clearly unsatisfactory,
and it's not good enough.
There's equally, and I do say this to all these things,
we need to look at where the risk is around it.
So some of those cases in there,
and I forget which subset it was, the HMIC had dip checked,
They were being dealt with by investigation,
but nobody had gone back to the complainant within the timescale to update them.
Now that's poor, that shouldn't happen, we should address that.
Does that increase the risk in terms of that alleged misconduct not being handled?
No it doesn't necessarily because the action was being taken from it.
So we need to look about is this about the investigations,
is this about the process around it?
and I think there's some things that we've learned
from the Claire's Law work,
which we've discussed a lot on the panel,
about where we can automate some of the process stuff
in here, which I think could be really valuable.
So you want a concrete, what should we be doing about it?
We should be reducing those, that timeliness.
Can we do it by putting more people into PSD?
Frankly, no, I don't think we can,
because this is really important,
but which police officers are we gonna take
from doing roads policing or wherever
to get a process better?
we need to be using the technology.
And I think we've got some examples where that has worked.
So it's not just, we got some tech, it'll be okay.
I think there's some reasons to be hopeful about that.
But I do still want to come back to you
with a more detailed answer
because we haven't gone through that.
I think there's other areas around
the appropriate sign off for various things.
So one being at the right level.
Now there's some stuff in there where
I want to get some assurance from the force about those levels.
So I think there are some places where, and I won't specify them here,
where the force would say we're following all of the approved professional practise
from the College of Policing, and HMIC are coming in and saying,
but we think it would be better if you did this.
And that's fine and legitimate. Actually, is it a failing or is it just a could be better?
And we need to understand where those bits are. So, for example, the investigative level
that those within PSD and Counter Corruption have, you know, are they PIP3 or PIP4? This
is going to get quite technical about the level of investigative training that someone's
got. But actually, if the force are meeting the required standards set by the College
of policing, but the Inspectorate would like it to be higher, then in straightened times
I might well say that's interesting noted and if we could, we would.
There are other areas where I would actively, well not disagree.
So one of the points in there around counter -corruption, and this is a little bit where I go back to
the last point about the managing of risks and benefits.
So one of the things I mentioned there is about encrypted apps being used by officers
on forced devices, that's WhatsApp being used across our rural communities.
That has been a huge success and it's something we've talked about here before,
the use of WhatsApp in amongst our rural crime areas has been a massive success.
It is quite right that we mitigate against risk
and that counter -corruption have proper insight into that.
Now what I think is set out in the HMIC report as I read it,
is that we have some cheques and balances in terms of what the rules of engagement
are for those officers and those officers have to have it signed off by their line manager
to make sure it is appropriate. They've got a good business case for using that app.
What is lacking is the counter -corruption unit having a centrally held list of those
officers who've got access to that. Now it's a relatively easy thing to fix,
but it's also you could read that headline report from HMIC and say, well we shouldn't be doing
encrypted apps. I would push back very strongly and say there's a benefit to policing here and
there's a risk and we need to judge those and I think what we the way you
balance them is having the right processes in place so the answer is you
know counter -corruption need to hold a central database of who those officers
are. So those are my initial thoughts on things we can practically do
quite quickly but I would ask you to wait for the full version till we've
Cllr Pamela Mackenzie-Reilly - Co-opted Independent - 1:02:10
actually worked on the street. Thank you very much yeah I will wait for the full version but thank you for what you've said.
it does have parallels for me with the work that we've been doing on Claire's Law
and I hear what you're saying about risk and that kind of quantifiable risk
that's there but there's also that kind of qualitative risk about about
confidence in policing and some of the softer things that you've got people who
are putting in a complaint and that complaint is not being timely managed or
appropriately managed and I think the risks to public, you know, public perception and the confidence in the policing is
maybe different from the risks as to is this is this going to have it, you know, is this going to have a hard and
different outcome behaviorally, it's more about the feeling and I think that's really important and the damage that may be being done
which if we focus too much on the quantifiable rather than the qualitative, is it, you know, that damage is huge and
and so I just want to kind of make that plea that it's not all about well actually is anything going to happen?
No, nothing, it isn't that important.
It's hugely important to the person who feels very badly done to and has put in a complaint.
I'm sure you appreciate that but I just wanted to highlight it.
Yeah, no, I think that's very fair.
Matthew Barber - PCC - 1:03:28
I stress my original point because we are talking about a world of risk when we get into the misconduct world.
So the risk element does matter but I think the reputational risk, if I put it in those terms, matters as well.
I think it matters twofold.
It matters for the officer who's got a complaint in against them.
They deserve to have that dealt with in a timely fashion.
The complainant deserves to clearly have that dealt with in a timely fashion.
Where there is action that needs to be taken, clearly,
we want that to be done swiftly wherever possible.
But also, there is a subset of some of these complaints
which will turn out to be unfounded.
And in terms of public confidence,
we are much better off dealing with those quickly and honestly,
and that sometimes upsets people when they say,
well sorry, there's nothing to see here,
nothing went wrong, we're sorry you didn't like the outcome,
which is sometimes, but actually,
do you know what, you're best doing that quickly as well?
Because the longer that you think linger,
the worse it becomes.
So I don't disagree, and I think we can learn some lessons
around the areas of automation
that we've done around Claresville.
Thank you.
Last question from Karen, please.
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 1:04:28
I'm sorry, sorry.
Cllr Karen Rowland - Reading Borough Council - 1:04:33
Cllr Kate Gregory - South Oxfordshire District Council - 1:04:43
Thank you for the report. I've got two questions if that's okay. A large proportion of the
complaints were resolved in, are resolved informally without a right of review. What
safeguards are there to ensure that complainants are not being steered into a formal, informal
resolution where a formal investigation might be more appropriate, that's my
first one. My second one is also is about the delays in placing individuals on the
sexual risk register. Again what safeguards are currently in place to
protect the public while investigations are ongoing? I'll come back to you if I may on
Matthew Barber - PCC - 1:05:31
the second point with a more detailed answer outside the meeting about the sexual register,
because I don't want to give you an incorrect answer, so I'll follow that one outside the
meeting if I can. I think the point about those that are inside section 3 and outside section 3,
I always find it confusing as to which is which, but the outside is the informal one.
I think there's two things followed by a third, if I may. So the first one is dip checking of those
by my office to make sure that they're going the right way.
Now that's clearly not every case, but the dip checking is to try and make sure we don't
find any outliers. And the second area is actually recognising
that in the past TVP had been an outlier in having more under Section 3 than almost certainly
any other force within our most similar group. So there was almost a deliberate reduction
by looking at, so well actually we looked at the timeliness not just of the initial
response which was picked up by HMIC but the length of time taken to deal with
these investigations and actually one of the reasons that we were an outlier
compared with other similar forces was because more were being going through a
formal investigation which takes longer which often ends up with a worse outcome
for the complainant because what they want is a quick answer to their thing
that could be dealt with by the local inspector managing it. But you then
dip -cheque to make sure that works. The third bit if you like, my additional bit
which we didn't do was changing the complaint model that I talked about
before where actually the recording and managing of complaints currently sits
with PSD and models 2 & 3 to varying degrees the OPCC managed that bit so we
do still have that the sort of nuclear button that we said well actually we'll
just take control of it all but we need to make sure that actually addresses the
problem because I think at the moment we're still within what seems reasonable
in terms of those inside and outside section 3 looking at what's happening
across the country in the same way that the increase in overall complaints is broadly
in line with what policing is seeing. We shouldn't be an outlier doing more outside in section
3 or less. Frankly, we ought to be around the same margin, I would think.
I'll come back to you on that.
Thank you. If we can move on to the next topic now, the Inland Waterways Policing Report.

7 Inlands Waterways Policing Report

Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 1:07:47
Matthew Barber - PCC - 1:07:51
Thank you, Chairman. A very brief introduction from me because I think we've discussed some of this before.
Office members were wanting to have some update on the resources that were available and where they were going.
So hopefully the report answers some of those questions and I'm afraid for Reading we still can't afford our own Marine unit.
But hopefully this gives you some reassurance about what is available.
Thank you. As you've already pointed out, I'm going to Councillor Wilson first and Karen can pop up afterwards.
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 1:08:19
Thank you, Chairman. Thank you for coming back and providing the report.
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 1:08:23
I noted there's a lot of activity in terms of a kind of multi -agency approach and the details provided by area.
Is there any learning from that in terms of what seems to have worked particularly well?
Do we have any form of measurement so that we can share best practise out across the area?
Or is every neighbourhood policing area left to its own devices?
and what information sharing is there across the force or within the counties?
So it's a really fair point. I think the short answer is no, I don't think we do have anything.
Matthew Barber - PCC - 1:09:11
I think it's potentially difficult to do because thankfully, he says touching wood,
although we see some horrible incidents where people have lost their lives, they are numerically very rare.
And so it's quite difficult to prove effectiveness.
we can do some water awareness stuff in one area and we might still get a death,
we might get nothing for five years but is that because we did some really good education or was
actually got really lucky. So it's difficult to prove cause and effect around some of the
preventative stuff and there are lots of partners in this so you're just thinking of the fire
services, doing three fire services. So I'm not sure we really do collate much of that. In terms
of a more unified approach across Thames Valley, it won't be perfect but I'm more confident around
the policing approach because we've got the Joint Operations Unit who will
oversee a lot of the stuff around the water safety because of the shared
marine unit and we've got at least got one force and we know there were some
challenges around getting consistency but you've got one police force. Whereas
if you look down that list with partners particularly it's fire services
but not exclusively you've got lots of other people there who frankly Royal
Berkshire Fire Service don't really care too much about what advice has been
given out in Milton Keynes because they're doing different stuff. So I'm
not sure it's a very helpful answer. I think it's probably a no in all honesty and I
think it would just be really difficult to capture because measuring the
benefits from this are numerically so lower proving cause and effect would be
really difficult I think.
Karen?
Cllr Karen Rowland - Reading Borough Council - 1:10:50
Thank you chair and I suppose my hope of a naval unit in the middle of Thames will continue.
It's gone from a marine unit to a naval unit now which is very impressive.
I thought that was you and not me but.
No I think that's a matter of geography.
I appreciate the updates and the water safety active summary across the Thames Valley here.
I just, when I look at the Berkshire West Reading list there, it doesn't quite reflect the knowledge as I know it.
So perhaps I don't want to go into the operational aspects or the numbers, which I'm sure you don't have at this point.
But it might be helpful to understand where that report came from and if that's, if that, because what you're reporting and what I understand are kind of two different number ranges.
So we'll take that, we'll take that outside. It just draws to question about what perhaps has been given for the rest of the entire Thames Valley area here.
I just wanted to know in your thought though, the joint patrols and things like that, how those are going.
I know that we had had a large one planned I believe at the end of January, why anyone would plan that in January
during what's typically flood season is probably escapes both your and my understanding, but I'm sure they had the reasons.
was obviously cancelled, but are those, and hopefully reschedule rather shortly,
but are those joint patrols helping out, to your knowledge, really, and does that by working together with the EA, pulling together all of those agents that have to be pulled together,
we have a particular challenge around some of our little boards, that type of issue.
Are those actually being useful across the Thames Valley in sharpening your response on the river?
So I think, I mean on the specifics, Councillor O 'Brien, I think Chief Councillor and I are at Reading on Monday,
Matthew Barber - PCC - 1:13:08
so I'm sure that we can get into the more parochial bits then.
And what I think this does show,
and this is purely anecdotal from those people,
and it's generally down in the Reading and Berkshire area
because those are the conversations I've had
around the issues we've seen at Reading Festival, et cetera,
that I do think that the good thing about joint patrols,
whether a joint patrol on a particular day
delivers anything, is building relationships
at a very operational between the people who matter.
So I think that is improving as a result of doing some joint patrol.
So sort of whether any particular patrol results in an arrest is quite neither here nor there.
But actually it's about for me this level of activity is about getting the commanders in those areas,
the local teams in those areas to recognise that they're not just policing the dry land.
The way you've got a river through there will be some risk in terms of some of the water safety stuff.
there will be a risk of criminality in terms of some of the drug issues that
we've discussed around Reading. And so first off making sure there is an
awareness amongst those teams that as a police officer you don't just stop at
the riverbank and there's nothing to worry about over there. But in the
terms of then what we do about it, yes it's not going to be patrolled
every day by a naval unit and the Royal Navy is struggling to get one boat out of
Southampton. I'm not sure we're going to get a lot more on the Thames but you
You know, we are a landlocked police force area.
I think it's quite instructive with the exception,
I think it was Nottingham, if you look at that map,
no one else has got one in the middle of the country.
But we do have a really good access to one,
so, and we work with other partners.
So I think hopefully the panel should be reassured
that there is the ability to draw on that resource.
I think the joint patrols make people more ready
to draw on that resource because they know the,
like from the EA that they can go up with,
they know to make the phone call to.
Those human connexions I think do make a difference.
So it's very much part of the suite of tactics that are available still.
But I'm sorry, we can't afford our own one.
Last review Karen, I'll just respond to PCC, it's now 5 to 12.
Yeah, I just wanted to come back and thank you very much
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 1:15:19
because I do think it is that breeding that familiarity,
Cllr Karen Rowland - Reading Borough Council - 1:15:22
working on those relationships and everything that are making water safer.
and so I really thank you for all your efforts on that and I do hope that I do
hope that it continues because I think that means better safety on our
waterways and so thank you.
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 1:15:44
Thank you Chair. Commissioner just in the light of forthcoming police reorganisation
Cllr Paul Trendall - Milton Keynes Council - 1:15:50
and the whole cross -border nature of inland waterway policing have you come
across any discussion about handing the inland waterways over to the transport
police, BTP? The short answer is no. That no doubt pleased him. Any thanks? Just as you know
we've got two marine units in Milton Keynes but they're both from the fire
service. We have no police marine units either. Thank you. Can we move then please on Mr.
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 1:16:17
Barber to the proposed white paper? Well I thought Councillor Trenhall was doing a

8 White Paper - 'From local to national: a new model for policing'

wonderful segue for me then into the white paper and I would given the
Matthew Barber - PCC - 1:16:30
Chairman's just reminded me about the time I will try and keep my comments
brief because this is this is just a verbal update but a few things obviously
as discussed at the last meeting I'm going to disappear you're going to
disappear the Thames Valley Police might disappear I think is the short answer
now we've seen the white paper there are there are a whole load of issues in
There is the creation of the National Police Service
and talk about specialist units moving into the National Police Service.
Now some of that, before I sound like a complete naysayer,
some of that I think makes an awful lot of sense.
The National Crime Agency do a lot of this role at the moment,
they're not a police force, most people don't really get the distinction,
but it would be quite helpful if the NCA were a police force.
A lot of NCA staff are former police officers who've gone to the NCA.
There's a whole load of stuff that needs to be worked out about terms and conditions though when they do that.
So there is a lot of argument around some elements of serious organised crime, counter -terrorism,
some elements of specialist capabilities, particularly around fraud and cybercrime.
I've long bemoaned the fact that it's not just the NCA that have a footprint in fraud and cybercrime,
but you've got local police forces, you've got the serious fraud office, you've got City
of London Police, you've got the National Economic Crime Centre, occasionally GCHQ, you've
got all of these agencies involved and it is a complete mess.
So actually having a national police service as the one place to go to has control of that
stuff, I think would be very beneficial.
That is about where my enthusiasm for the white paper stops.
There is, I think, a real lack of clarity over governance.
I think the one thing that this government is absolutely going to do,
I think lots of other things might change,
but the one thing the government are definitely going to do is scrap PCCs.
It's about the only popular thing they've announced since going to power.
So I'm sure they will stick with that.
Nobody's going to be losing a politician,
but I think anything I say on that subject is likely to be taken as sour grapes.
But I do think there is a real issue around effective governance of policing,
when effectively I think we will move from a position where someone is elected
to someone who was still doing my job. So for those people who are delighted to
see me go and save a salary you'll end up with someone else who's just
appointed to do my job, possibly earning a slightly higher salary if they're
deemed to be a council officer as opposed to someone who's elected and
actually they won't have that sort of mandate, they won't have the
accountability of the public. I think that's a bad thing but that's my personal
There are lots of other concerns I have. So some of them are just unanswered questions and perhaps the government will eventually give us the right answer.
So the white paper talks about roads policing being part of a national asset.
We've talked about roads policing and actually how local people want it to be and that at the moment a lot of roads policing time is spent making arrests for neighbourhood teams and response teams because they can get there quickly and they've got the resource and ability to do that.
So at the moment that's quite easy because the same control room can just ask Rose Policing to go and attend something.
Will we be in a world in ten years time where if a local neighbour or team needs some assistance from Rose Policing
they've got to go through a National Police Service control room and ask someone to release some resources.
Well there's another 20 minutes lost in the bureaucracy. That sort of stuff concerns me.
Of course they might row back from it.
Forensics is going to be part of the National Police Service apparently.
In theory that sounds great. For us in Thames Valley we've just spent about £50 million on a new building for forensics.
Now is that just going to be nationalised and we lose it?
Are they going to pay Thames Valley Police to buy that facility off of us and it becomes part of the National Police Service?
Because otherwise local taxpayers have lost a big asset.
Forensics as a service covers everything from the very high -end, high -tech, exciting stuff that they're making a programme out of,
to scenes of crimes officers who are based in our local command units.
Now, if forensics is nationalised, at what point do they have the cut -off?
When a police officer is dealing with a violent incident
and wants scenes of crimes officers to come and look at some blood spatters,
do we need to get someone from the National Police Service to come out?
Or again, can it be dispatched through part of the same force?
I don't know. Hopefully someone can answer that.
But those are the sorts of things that we should at least be asking the right questions about at the moment.
You've got the bigger issues of force mergers.
Lord Hogan Howell is going to do the independent review
of force mergers.
If you want to know how independent that is,
you can Google Lord Hogan Howell,
or Bernard Hogan Howell as he was then,
and regional police forces,
and you'll find articles from about 10 years ago
when he was Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police,
where he said we should have
nine or 10 regional police forces.
So I'm reasonably confident that the outcome of the review
will be that we have nine or ten regional police forces.
We could save an awful lot of time and money, couldn't we,
if we were just honest about these things.
So that means, what does nine or ten regional police forces mean?
That means a police force that covers from Milton Keynes to Margate.
It's the south -east of England, effectively.
Now, within that, there's how you share the command,
and do you have one chief constable in lots of local police areas?
Does Thames Valley have its own chief superintendent,
like we have one for each of the counties now?
Does each county still have a chief superintendent?
All of those are unanswered questions, but I genuinely fear that any organisation that
moves to the south -east level becomes more remote from its communities, less able to
deliver those specialist capabilities that a force like Thames Valley has.
My last area of concern before I shut up and happily answer any questions is operational
independence.
I'm really genuinely concerned about this.
So I cannot direct the Chief Constable or any of his police officers in their operational duties.
Quite right too, I don't want to.
The Home Secretary cannot direct the Chief Constable and they shouldn't want to.
At the moment I set out a police and crime plan, the Chief has to have regard to it.
The Home Secretary sets strategic policing priorities, the Chief Constable has to have regard to them.
The proposal in the White Paper is to change the law so that Chief Officers
don't just have to have regard to the strategic policing requirements but have
a statutory duty to deliver the strategic policing requirements. The Home
Secretary, because it's in the zeitgeist, talks about taking back control of
policing. No Home Secretary in the history of British policing has ever had
that level of control. Now at the moment strategic policing requirements might
just say you need to have a dedicated rape team, so that might be reasonable
for people to to accept. But the Home Office have also said that those
strategic requirements will get much more detailed and more intrusive.
They've said that in the same white paper.
So I think we should be genuinely concerned.
I think this is one of the things that the House of Lords may put a plug on.
Having a Home Secretary that can say things, that can state things,
that Chief Constable's have a duty to deliver is a massive assault
on Operation Independence of Policing in this country, in my view.
And there might be plenty of people who think Shabana Maboud,
whatever her politics are, well she's not too bad and we know what she intends and it's
all okay because this government are broadly reasonable whether you like them or not.
Once you put that on the statute book, then it becomes really easy for another Home Secretary
to come in who has slightly more distasteful views on either end of the political spectrum
and it won't be them that's changing the law in some huge assault on our policing.
They will be using the legislation that's been put on the statute book by another government.
That sounds very dramatic.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist who believes in it, but I think we need to be really careful
that we don't just allow these things to happen.
Those are my concerns.
I am commissioning a report to look specifically at what the risks and benefits could be from
the White Paper for Terence Valley, which I will be using to submit to Lord Hogan House
review and submit to the Home Office and sharing publicly.
Obviously, I'll bring that to the panel when it's completed.
We should be in time for your next meeting.
Thank you.
Councillor Thomas.
Thank you.
Cllr Bethia Thomas - Vale of White Horse DC - 1:24:43
I just wanted to say I agree with a lot of what you just said then and obviously everybody in this room is experiencing some level of disruption, disorganisation or disorganisation as they say reorganisation, yourself included Matthew and
I am concerned that that the details have not been thought through, and particularly with the PCC.
The separation of duties with the Home Secretary is a major concern for those reasons that you're saying.
Also about assets, I am concerned because this affects all these different levels of reorganisation.
There are a lot of assets involved and obviously we do not want to be wasting public money.
So I would like to think that the government has considered these issues, but if you need any support on that front, I think that's really something that
I don't have much, I don't have much, but yeah, I do agree and I agree that the size of these authorities does matter
and smaller I think is better just as you said. Thank you.

9 Annual Assurance Report 2025 from the Joint Independent Audit Committee to the Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley and the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police

Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 1:26:06
Thank you. Item on the agenda number nine please, the annual insurance report.
Matthew Barber - PCC - 1:26:14
Nothing further to add really Chairman, I think this came last year, the panel is normally here to note,
I think you noted last year it came quite late so we've made sure it's come relatively early.
This time it's the assurance report from the Joint Independent Audit Committee to both myself and the
Chief Constable. Happy to pick anything up from it if you wish. Again it all lands in that Mr Hogan
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 1:26:37
how this goes forward and who supports what.
isn't it really?

10 Chairman/PCC Updates and Topical Issues Report

Cllr Stephanie Steevenson - West Berkshire Council - 1:26:59
Yes, please. Can I just find it? This is about, Commissioner, a previous question I asked
about the funding of state and international visits being offloaded onto, in my case, West
Berkshire police force. I think I'd like to ask if you've got any more information about
Matthew Barber - PCC - 1:27:28
that please and how it's dealt with effectively. Thank you. I have no firm answers. We have some
following it to take the to take the Trump visit to Windsor alone that cost
that cost in the region of 10 million pounds to Thames Valley Police but the
bulk of that we can reclaim the the rules for this is probably is worth
explaining the rules for reclaiming for these sort of special operations
mutual aid things mean that if Thames Valley Police are spending anything
extra so we have to hire in a load of vehicles we have to have some catering
we also have some marquees to pop up to put people in, all those sorts of things,
we can get all that money back because it's a special operation.
If Wiltshire Constabulary send us 100 officers to come over and help us in the preparations
or on the day, they can claim back the cost of those 100 officers.
What Thames Valley Police can't do as the host forced is the cost of our own people
who would have been on duty anyway doing something else.
And now in the normal run of things, when it's mutual aid for some riots that we saw
a year ago or a big football match, that's sort of okay because that's spontaneous policing
and that's what the police are there to do.
I think these things are very different because they are planned events, they're organised
by His Majesty's government, they have a choice as to whether or not to do them, and they
have a disproportional effect in this case on Thames Valley.
What we know, and we knew in advance, that Buckingham Palace was being refurbished.
We've got about three years of this, we're about a year into it.
We've already had the French President, the German President, the American President,
we've got Nigerians at the moment.
We have at least another one expected and another two years of the same.
For the Trump visit alone, we had £900 ,000,
which was the cost of people that we couldn't reclaim.
I'm particularly frustrated because there were conversations
between the force and the Home Office during the preparations for those events,
which sounded quite optimistic about the fact that government understood that
predicament and were going to make an exception. Now if I'm charitable about it,
it feels like the Home Office were on side, they were hoping that the Foreign
Commonwealth Office would cough up. Foreign Commonwealth Office have said no,
Home Office have said we tried but sorry there's no money if I'm being charitable.
If I'm being less charitable, it sounds a little bit as if you're saying,
don't worry, carry on with all your work, we're going to pay you at the end.
And when the bill comes in, they say, oh no, actually we're going to stick with the original rule.
I paraphrase slightly.
Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead are in a similar situation.
Their costs are very different in scale.
So I think their overall costs for the state visit was about £300 ,000,
of which they can claim none back.
So we're, in terms of what we can reclaim with already three times bigger than their bill.
They had played hardball, shall we say,
and said that they wouldn't support future state visits
and the government have caved and said,
oh, in that case, we'll have to pay you for the next one.
So they are gonna get their money,
at least for those that we know of, which is good.
So far, the Home Secretary hasn't even bothered
to reply to my latest letter on the subject,
which is disappointing, to say the least.
The sums of money are bigger.
There is some precedent around police funding, but I don't think it applies in this instance.
But I am nevertheless encouraged by the fact that the government corporately have caved
on the Royal Borough, because I think that adds to our wider argument about why we should
get the money back.
I will keep the pressure on.
I've tried to have some contact with people in the Royal Household.
It's not their responsibility, but they may well be able to apply a little bit of pressure
on that.
I don't think that, and I wouldn't support the police doing what the Royal
Borough have done, which is they said we just won't support it because, and I
don't mean this in any disrespect to the Royal Borough, they are a part of the
operation, it could go ahead without them. What would happen if they didn't do it
was the police would have to put more people on the ground to fill the gap
left by the Royal Borough's excellent sort of community wardens, they have
these ambassadors that are out and about, we would have had to fill that gap in
to manage the crowds a bit more. So I'm grateful for what they do but it's not
realistic for policing to say, the Chief Constable will say I'm going to refuse to
support a state visit because it is a national thing there is clearly a risk
whatever you might think about visiting government there's a risk to the public
in Windsor and it's quite you know police are duty bound to do it so we
can't play the same tactics but I'm optimistic that having caved to the Royal
Borough we may still make some progress.
Thank you. Councillor Gordon please.
Thank you.
Cllr Laura Gordon - Oxfordshire County Council - 1:32:17
Yeah, so I think my, I had questions
about the inspector report, which I mean,
I know you referenced that briefly at the beginning,
but I do think it's important to raise it
because I have to say, I find it frankly terrifying
given the very high profile failures we've seen
across the country, particularly in the
metropolitan police, but more broadly of people
who frankly should not be in the police being allowed to,
allowed to continue working. And the failure, I think in particular, the failure to refer
cases upwards that legally were required to be referred upwards. I think the Inspector
of the Court mentioned three such cases. I mean, that shouldn't be happening once, let
alone three times. And I mean, it would just be quite helpful to comment on what you are
doing to ensure that something like that never ever happens again and also to double cheque
that it really is just these three. I mean because frankly the fact that you've let this
happen three times, I genuinely, like how can you, is it really just these three or
is it something that's happening?
Matthew Barber - PCC - 1:33:31
So I don't disagree with the seriousness of a lot of what is in the report. As I mentioned
earlier in the meeting, we will come, I'll come back to the panel with a full response
all the recommendations we've already discussed. I would say, however, and there are plenty of things
in there which I would agree, and I've said from the start, that the outcome of this is more than
just disappointing. There are clearly areas where the force need to improve. However, actually one
of the areas which was adequate, it's always nice to get good, but adequate is certainly adequate,
was actually around the vetting. So there was a few issues to pick up in vetting, but actually
vetting got the adequate element of that and I think that is we've had a lot of
focus on that over the last couple of years so I don't pick on the good thing
to hide the rest of it but you yourself picked up the the people who shouldn't
be in policing at all and that is really down to the vetting actually that's one
of those areas that from lots of discussion at this meeting we've done an
awful lot of work on so I think that's it's good and it highlights a lot of
really good work that TVP have done. I'm sorry I don't really think that that's
answering the question that I asked, I mean, I think, um,
Cllr Laura Gordon - Oxfordshire County Council - 1:34:35
the fact is that people's risk level changes over time and vetting somebody at
the point that they join and then they might stay in the force for 20 years.
You can't just assume that it's fine from there on.
And that's why the complaints process and the legal referrals are really
important. Similarly, sort of with the drug testing, um,
it's very clear that you're doing random drug testing of new recruits,
but not of established officers, but as I'm sure everyone will accept, you know,
drug abuse and addiction can strike at any stage of life.
So it's not really, I don't really think that saying,
oh, well, obviously it's better to be doing vetting well
than not be doing vetting well.
But I don't really think that that's an acceptable response
to the way that things are clearly being mishandled
with regard to existing officers
that will be putting the public at risk.
So I raised the vetting because you yourself pointed
what some of the issues that we'd seen in the Met
about people being allowed into the force
Matthew Barber - PCC - 1:35:28
and staying in the force, and that is about vetting.
And you're right, vetting is absolutely
not just about that snapshot, but part of what TVP have done over recent years is the
re -vetting of people, so that is proactively and not just waiting for complaints from people,
but proactively doing the re -vetting. I don't for a moment suggest that this report is good,
because it's clearly not. There are areas where the force requires improvement, as I've
addressed, and we'll come back to the panel with the full response to the recommendations
as I'll be sending back to HMIC. The point about the vetting was, because I was responding
to your point around that, I think that does matter,
and it does matter that we have gotten adequate on there
because there's a lot of work gone into it.
Your wider points about those cases
that should have been referred to the IPC,
we picked up through the response we will formally give,
and we'll happily come back to the panel
on those around the processes.
And I've talked about some of the other issues already
about how we address the complaint processes more broadly.
Some of that is around timeliness,
some of that is around quality, some of that is the route whether they're inside or outside of
Schedule 3. So I don't for a moment take the outcomes of this lightly, but we need to work
through those recommendations very clearly to come up with a response about what we will do as a
result, what the Force will do as a result, including potentially checking for what those
other missed opportunities are, ensuring the processes are in place to make sure that referrals,
whether it be to the IOPC, whether it be making sure that complaints are dealt with within or without
of Schedule 3 are properly done. But I'm not going to go into the detail of those responses now,
because we need to come up with a really clear plan in conjunction with the force of what I can then
hold the force to account for delivering as a response to these. And as I said, some of the points,
not all of them, are not those ones that you've picked up to be fair. I think I wouldn't necessarily
agree with the HMIC analysis of all of them. So we need to properly understand what those
are. And those aren't the ones that you've mentioned, but they're about the level of
PIP training for officers within PSD and counter corruption and the use of encrypted devices,
where I think we need to take a risk -based approach.
Councillor Stevenson, next please.
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 1:37:50
Cllr Stephanie Steevenson - West Berkshire Council - 1:37:52
Yes, thank you. I've got another topic actually. We've been told here that there's going to
be more guidelines about the use of social media within the police and for instance there's
going to be clearer guidance on releasing suspect information including ethnicity and
nationality. I had a resident contact me who's very concerned about things being published
on Thames Valley Police Facebook page where suspects are being arrested and then labelled
thief and crime spree stopped and other comments that are assuming that person is already guilty.
And in one case a mugshot was released with this statement which wasn't even the right
person. So I think we need to be very concerned about the use of social media that is assuming
guilt and not assuming innocence.
Can you comment on that?
Matthew Barber - PCC - 1:38:49
Yes, if you've got examples of that,
particularly, I wasn't aware of one where apparently
the wrong images, if you've got examples of that,
I'd love to take those up.
I think social media is a useful tool
for communicating this and I think the new guidelines
are helpful.
I think in West Bartsch, you have a very active
neighbourhood team, we're very good on social media
from a lot of stuff I see.
I think when, and some of it,
so I've seen some of the work they've done,
for example, around shoplifting.
Now I think where someone is arrested
for a shoplifting offence,
and they are generally,
but you're clearly pointing to exceptions,
but generally their face is obscured from an image,
and they say, we've just made an arrest for shoplifting.
I haven't got a problem with that,
because that's what's happened.
It's a matter of fact,
and they haven't identified anybody.
Actually, if it were happening in the street
and I took a picture as a member of the public
and shared it, that's fine, because it's a matter of record.
But generally speaking, you wouldn't expect the police
to show someone's face in those circumstances
because it's just an arrest.
When you get to a point of charge,
the, I have no problem with,
I'm very comfortable and supportive of the force
releasing images, names, and those details
about nationality, asylum status,
where relevant, et cetera, of people who have been charged.
the language from the police needs to be really careful about, as you say, the inference of guilt.
Now, the best example of this, which caused a little bit of ridicule for Thames Valley Police,
but I'm, you know, again, very supportive of and makes an awful lot of sense,
but I think shows how careful the force normally are, is there was a press release which went out
a few weeks ago, which said Thames Valley Police
had arrested a man in his 60s
at an address in Norfolk
and on suspicion of misconduct in public office
and searches were being conducted in Norfolk and Berkshire.
And the whole world seemed to say,
well, this is Prince Andrew,
this is Andrew Mountbound Windsor as he's now known.
Why are the police being so coy in naming him?
Well, for the very simple reason
that nobody had been charged and they were using the same set of information that someone should
be used. So when an arrest is made, generally someone might be identified by their sex,
by their age, by a location to inform the public of what's been going on, but nothing clearly
identifiable. I think in that case it is an exception, it was difficult for people not to
figure out who it was. But my point was there's a really good public example of the force following
those guidelines. Now if you've got examples where they haven't been I'd be really interested in
so thank you. But I think the point about then sharing the information when a charge is made,
and I think it does sometimes cause some confusion for the public, but I'm really supportive of the
guidelines and the force sticking to those guidelines. When an arrest is made, you don't
name someone. And often you'll see the social media cry, why won't you name this person? Is it
because you're covering something up? No, it's because they've just been arrested. And you know
in 24 hours, if there's a charge, you'll find out their name, you'll find out who they are,
because that's legitimate. But at no point should the police then infer guilt, as a matter of that.
It's important that that element of the criminal justice system, the bit where the police are
charging people, is done in public sight. But I think it's important that we don't just hide all
those details away, that justices seem to be done. But you're right, we need to get it right. So I
would love to hear those examples specifically, because those shouldn't happen.
Thank you. Any more questions on the topic of issues?
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 1:42:26
Yeah, thank you, Chair.
Cllr Geoff Saul - West Oxfordshire District Council - 1:42:36
There was a rather alarming report about an increase in taser discharges involving children in Thames Valley.
I wondered if you could say anything to reassure the public about any steps to improve oversight and training around this issue.
and if the percentages were rather frightening
and the numbers are less,
the numbers aren't that great,
but if you could perhaps comment.
Yes, thank you.
So I'm just trying to pull the numbers up,
if I have a, I won't be able to find them,
Matthew Barber - PCC - 1:43:02
I'm sure, within time.
You're right, there is a big difference
between what was reported
in terms of a high percentage increase
and an actual numerical increase.
and I think it's important to look at the real numbers.
So there were a total of,
bear with me,
a total of 166 times in the last calendar year
that Taser was discharged.
There were 12 occasions when a taser was discharged against someone who was under 18.
And I forget, I haven't, oh I have got, sorry, I have another tab.
So it went from seven to 12.
So percentage -wise that's a big increase, but we're talking about another five people.
I think that anybody who, whether you're the person being tasered or whether you're a police
it but police officers don't do it lightly and I think it is a really useful tactic that police
officers can use. There's a lot of scrutiny in it so the reason I can be confident about the level
of scrutiny is the numbers I've just managed to pull up just don't just show you month by month
the number of times it's been discharged but you can everything is recorded from the number of times
it is drawn, aimed, arced, so you can make it to a spark at the end, put the red dot
on someone, plus it being fired and then within that you can see how effective
it's been about whether or not the prongs have made contact, how many times
it's fired within that. So there's a lot of data in this area and we have our
Community Street channels who will oversee the data as we go through the
they can view the body -worn video of those incidents taking place.
So I think I'm confident about the level of oversight that we've got
and the training that's available to officers for it.
And it's not good to see an increase, but I do think across an entire year,
looking at an increase from 7 to 12 in a particular age group
is such a marginal difference in terms of absolute numbers.
I also think we need to put context to this,
and I don't have this number to hand.
again this is where those community scrutiny groups can look at the body -worn video, they can
look at the individual cases. Clearly the headline of under -18s makes it concerning. We're not talking
about five -year -old toddlers being tasered by the police. There are lots of 15, 16, 17 -year -olds
who can pose a real physical risk to people, to themselves, to police officers, to other people
around them and actually the age is often not known to the officer who is having to deal with
that situation in front of them.
So I think what we put in place
is the appropriate scrutiny.
One of the reasons that Taser, the company,
like using the UK is they use it as one of the test beds
because we have so much data around all of those bits
that are recorded about how often it's drawn, et cetera.
So they're very good at evidencing the use of the weapon.
You know, if you go to France,
you don't have anywhere near that level of data
and scrutiny around it.
So I'm confident we've got the data that looks into the detail of this.
I'm confident we've got the right processes through our community scrutiny groups to look at it.
And I do think we need to look at it in the context of what levels of threat police officers are being faced with.
And I don't think we should worry too much about the arbitrary level of the fact that he's under 18.
We need to get into that and look at the individual cases which is what those scrutiny groups do.
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 1:46:59
Thank you very much indeed. If there's no other questions in relation to the tropical

11 Work Programme

issues can we move on to the work programme now which is relatively full. There's only
one item which Mr. Barber and Councillor Newton are very passionate about is the cyber crime
task group which has reached a plateau and we haven't moved anywhere forward. It's not
to take place within this um electoral year it will be moving into next year and hopefully we
can move forward on a more positive vibe so do you want to go council Newton um no thank you
Cllr Stephen Newton - Wokingham Council - 1:47:40
um i just wanted to update panel members we have tried to um have some meetings and we have indeed
met with the uh the police commissioner and had a good session there um it was trying to engage
appropriately with Thames valley police themselves that we we had a few um snags i've spoken with the
commissioner prior to this meeting and we think we have a good constructive way forward
to move forward.
I ask for the forbearance of members that we do carry this into the new year.
Thank you.
Thank you very much indeed.
Karen?
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 1:48:05
Chair, I would like to second that.
Cllr Karen Rowland - Reading Borough Council - 1:48:10
I really support the work of certainly this task and finish group and the task and finish
groups that we have been working on over the last couple of three years, noting that we
We've got the anti -social behaviour task and finish group report coming in June.
This is really important work.
Okay, fair tries were made.
It didn't happen.
And I am hoping that whoever is sitting in these seats come June will be able to pick
that up and move that forward because it's a really important aspect.
And I think as counsellors across the region, we probably all face the impacts of this.
and so I think it's really important and I really would just second that moving
forward as quickly as possible. Thank you and when cybercrime is now a major
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 1:48:54
consideration within the police service of every type of offence from phones to
other forms of communication I think it's something we should pursue next
year and thank you for your efforts you've made so far. And that concludes

12 Exclusion of the Press and Public

the meeting for this part of it. Sorry, one second, sorry. Karen?

11 Work Programme

Cllr Karen Rowland - Reading Borough Council - 1:49:18
Yes, Chair. I mean, we are trying to discuss the work programme going forward, and I am correct.
And so as regards to the June meeting, obviously there may be many new people at this table,
But I think that Matthew Barber has advised that you will be bringing not one, but two reports back to this committee,
one of them in regards to the search and... those aspects.
And then also the white paper response, too.
So I think that there were two issues there that you were going to bring back.
Matthew Barber - PCC - 1:50:03
I think the two I've committed to bring back are the full response to the HMIC report and
the report I'm commissioning on the white paper.
Happy to bring those obviously whenever the panel want them.
I think they should both be available from the next meeting he offers hopefully.
But you may want to push them later into the year subject to your work plan.
That's clearly in the gift of the panel.
Peter Gammond - Co-Opted Independent - 1:50:29
I think sooner rather than later because they could have dramatic effects on how we are
moving forward ourselves, and yourself included.
So I think we will put those for the June meeting.
Thank you.

12 Exclusion of the Press and Public

Could I suggest we take a five minute break before we move on to the next part of the
Khalid Ahmed - TVP Crime Panel Scrutiny and Support Officer - 1:50:58
Sorry, we need to exclude the press and public because we're moving to a confidential part
of the agenda. There is a resolution there that we need to pass. I won't read it all
out but is that agreed?