Minutes of the Senior Command Team Meeting
Monday 8 February 2010

Present:

CC Meredydd Hughes (Chair)
DF Nigel Hiller
ACC Andy Holt
ACC Max Sahota

34. Declaration(s) of Interest

There were no declarations of interest.

Presentations

35. Internal Communications Review

Mr Mark Thompson introduced Ms Suzanne Hutchinson and Ms Henrietta Talbot, Corporate Communications, who gave a presentation on the Internal Communications Review and recommendations resulting from that review. Mr Thompson said the department now had resources available to look at internal communications and how best it could be managed. He outlined that the next steps were to determine SCT support for the recommendations which were:-

• Establish a corporate brand that runs through all the internal communication channels (presentation to be given to SCT on 8 March 2010)
• Improve the Intranet
• Re-launch and cut costs of Billboard
• E-Newsletter - publish weekly/replace General Orders
• Work closely with Corporate HR
• Establishment of Strategic Internal communications board
• Improve visibility of SCT and District Command Teams
• System of Evaluation

Following the presentation SCT raised the following points:-

• Work needs to be done around around SNT Webpages - perhaps a centralised team to ensure there is a corporate look for external and internal communications. At the moment sites very different at each district. ACC Holt would support financing a central team
• Ask staff how they would wish information fed to them - is there any value in a staff survey?
• Could e-mail usage be checked and old mail deleted to save clogging up the system. Should not use e-mail for quick unimportant messages
• Staff do not use e-mail as effectively as they could - this will improve with the introduction of Mobile Data.
• Team briefing headings must be consistent
• Too much content on the Intranet - pictures of staff in departments not necessary and clutters up the system.
• Should not use e-mail for quick unimportant messages
• Need a more robust publishing platform
• Need to ensure people can find information easy which should be used to drive force business
• Staff directory needs to be updated with current extension numbers also district/department names not changed i.e. still showing CID, Sheffield Central, North and South, Property Services, etc. which means searches cannot be carried out unless individual names are known.

After discussion SCT agreed that the first issues to be addressed should be the electronic systems and Billboard followed by Team Briefing

Standing Items

36. Minutes of meeting held on 25 January 2010

The minutes were approved as a true and accurate record.

37. Action Schedule and Work Programme

The action schedule and work programme were discussed and will be updated by the SCT Corporate Support Assistant.

38. Portfolio Issues

DF Hiller

Gave details of a meeting held recently between accountants and Personnel Managers to discuss officer numbers

ACC Holt

Chief Inspector Moves - Sheffield and RPG. SCT agreed that the Chief Inspectors at these two locations could exchange roles.

ACC Sahota

• Triple Listing Policy - referred to a meeting with CJAD and Andrew Davison, Justices' Clerk HMCS South Yorkshire, regarding HMCS Magistrates Courts new Listing and Scheduling Policy for Trials which came into effect on 1 February 2010. The meeting had been called to address SYP concerns over the impact of Triple Listing cases, a position HMCS initiated on 1/2/10. Mr Davison had been receptive to SYP concern, but pointed out that a decision had already been made to implement and trial the new policy and it would be difficult to reverse this now. Any positive or negative impact of this new policy will not be experienced until mid March 2010m with a review being conducted on 26 March, at which ACC Sahota will be present. Prior to that it was agreed that data should be collected to allow comparison pre and post policy.

• Drink Drive Campaign 2009 - this had departed from the usual with RPG doing voluntary testing. Feedback had been very positive, but it was agreed if it was to be used again increased publicity was needed prior to the campaign.

39. Force Performance

ACC Holt briefed colleagues on recent Force Performance outlining that all crime was down 13.3% with a detection rate of 31.3%.

Decision Papers

40. Disestablishment of Firearms Support Dogs

ACC Sahota outlined that the purpose of this paper was to seek a decision from SCT to disestablish the current Firearm Support dog structure in favour of an alternative structure, which would continue to provide resilient support to firearms incidents

The paper put forward the recommendation that the current structure for provision of canine support to firearms incidents is disestablished in favour of a more resilient structure provided by the General Patrol Dog (GPD) pool without passive attack capability.

Paper agreed.

Discussion Information/Items

41. SCT Portfolio Structures in Similar Sized Forces

Deferred.

Audit Reports

42. None

Papers to Review

43. None

Standing Items

44. Notification to Police Authority

No issues

45. Notification to Force

No issues

46. Any Other Business

No items