The Equality Standard for the Police Service (ESPS) was announced in the 2008 Policing Green Paper and launched, following field testing, by the Policing Minister in December 2009.
The ESPS is a performance improvement tool, developed by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), set at a strategic level with links to national policing priorities.
The Equality Standard sets out a visual journey of 22 units running from the Baseline stage through Integrating to Excelling. Baseline assesses an activity that must be in place, Integrating assesses one area that is part of wider activities and Excelling assesses via outcomes that contribute to improved community confidence. This approach allows for differing policing conditions and priorities. At a time of limited resources, the Equality Standard does not require the police service to carry out new tasks but to deliver improved equality outcomes for existing day-to-day activities.
It is designed to contribute to improving community confidence and therefore has a strong Citizen Focus on finding out local people’s needs, their concerns about quality of life and the impacts on them of anti-social behaviour and serious crime. Unit 12 requires service leaders to set out a vision for fair treatment (both internal and external) which the police workforce of officers, staff and community volunteers will deliver in the way they undertake those day-to-day tasks. This is not a tick-box approach and it requires real evidence of activities and outcomes from operational policing and corporate performance. However, no duplication of work is required and one area of evidence could be used against a number of different criteria across the 22 units.
Lincolnshire and the Standard
A self assessment of the services position on the Equality Standard for the Police Service was undertaken by the Equality and Diversity Officer earlier in 2011, as the Standard is Citizen Focused it was felt that verification by community members would be the best way to gain community input into and support for the work undertaken.
The assessment was undertaken on the 19th December 2011 with a diverse cross section of the community. Consultation was also undertaken on what those attending thought our Equality Objectives should be for the future. The outcomes of the day was that the community members assessed Lincolnshire Police as being at "Baseline" with elements of the "Integration" level which verified where we thought we were and confirmed we had met our target of achieving "Baseline".
The Strategic Diversity Board and Lincolnshire Police Authority were informed of the results if the community assessment and a decision was made to repeat the assessment annually to make sure that standards are being kept.
