As we approach the 1st anniversary of the introduction of the ‘new’ conduct and performance regulations which came about as a result of the Taylor review we have been looking back over these last 12 months to see how their implementation has been handled and you probably won’t be surprised to hear that the words ‘inconsistently’ & ‘disproportionately’ appear high up on the list of adjectives used by our reps to describe cases they have been involved in.

Taylor’s recommendations were always going to be a culture shock to the police service- an organisation which lets not forget had operated under a code based on military discipline for more than 150 years- and so I guess it might have been overly optimistic for us to expect that they might by this point have been fully embraced.

Convincing senior managers well versed in the customs of the old code to consider whether an indiscretion would better be dealt with as ‘under performance’ rather than misconduct was never going to be easy and so it has proved.

The new regulations use words like fair, open and proportionate to describe what the appropriate response to managing concerns regarding an officer’s conduct or performance should be. Revolutionary stuff! It has been said that both the Conduct & Performance Regs 2008 contain the dangerous language of radicals otherwise described as ‘namby pamby tosh’!

They are it says designed to ‘create a culture of improvement, learning and development and Improve performance and attendance within the police service’ The lack of the word ‘punishment’ clearly didn’t please traditionalists who were left to extract a few crumbs of comfort from the phrase ‘Allow for disciplinary action where appropriate’

And boy have they seized upon those few crumbs in the attempt to reassemble the slice of toast. Examples involving members of the MPS inspecting ranks of disproportionate and muddled locally instigated misconduct investigations concerning matters which are clearly performance issues are sadly plentiful. As indeed are examples of heavy handed management intervention in matters that by any standard of severity assessment can only be adjudged as minor.

Both of the new sets of Regs contain the phrase ‘The concept of reasonableness’ but it appears any instruction that the decision makers were in receipt of prior to implementation failed to sufficiently highlight the fundamental importance of these  four words to the overall success of the Taylor reforms.

But again it’s clear that in this respect we clearly had too higher expectations of what might be achieved. Given that when promoted neither Chief Inspectors nor the Superintending ranks are given any rank specific training we really shouldn’t be shocked when each of them places their own individual interpretation, based on their own experiences and prejudices, upon these and other regulations.

So one year on what we have is a whole host of examples, many of which would be comical if it weren’t for the knowledge that some poor soul has been on the receiving end of the judgement, whereby the new Regs. have been misinterpreted, misunderstood, mismanaged or just plain ignored.

One year on perhaps the MPS should also be reviewing Taylor’s progress and correcting the poor performance of those charged with implementing the regulations. I think that as a concept is reasonable. Don’t You?

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