COLLABORATING with neighbouring forces can be a frustrating experience for all concerned, Essex Police Federation says.<\/p>\n
When it works well, working closely with other forces can help reduce crime and provide a better service for the public, a recent HMICFRS report said.<\/p>\n
However, inspectors concluded that too often collaborations fail, leading to more costs and inefficiencies.<\/p>\n
Essex officers already work closely with their Kent counterparts and are part of a seven force strong collaborative working group with other forces in the South East and Home Counties.<\/p>\n
While they have been some positives, it has seen an end to some services valued by Essex officers, Federation Chair Laura Heggie said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s difficult because we collaborate with Kent, but we\u2019re also part of the seven force collaboration which is Herts, Beds, Cambs, Norfolk and Suffolk, ourselves and Kent.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been difficult. In some of the work I\u2019ve been doing around occupational health, each occupational health department from each force for what you would expect to be a standard procedure does something different.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat might be around recruitment, their AFO, or their colour-vision testing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery single force is doing it differently, but we\u2019ve got a standard requirement. Unfortunately, for a lot of the forces that\u2019s the way they\u2019ve always done it, so that\u2019s the way they\u2019re continuing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been quite reassuring in Essex with the work which has been done about colour-vision in particular for Taser officers that they have done their research this time and they have invested the money that they needed to in order to ensure that Essex is going to comply to almost the gold standard.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat has to be the best for officers, especially if they\u2019re involved in an incident.\u201d<\/p>\n
Financial cuts have seen the end to Essex\u2019s School of Excellence for driving, Laura added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s probably the most frustrating thing to watch over the years has been the demise of our Driving school, for Essex we used to have a School of Excellence for our driving. With officers coming to us from other forces to complete their training.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have that anymore. With our firearms training, we used to have numerous ranges that we had access to. Many times now firearms officers have to travel out of the force area in order to complete that training. Public Order training venues are being reduced meaning a lot more traveling to and from counties.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat time spent travelling is time that they\u2019re not training. I\u2019m sure it can\u2019t be a cost effective way to do things either in actual expense or officers hours. So, I feel like in some ways we seem to have lost more than we\u2019ve gained necessarily, by collaboration, which is sad.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some things that work well, but I\u2019d say they\u2019re in the minority, which is a shame.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
COLLABORATING with neighbouring forces can be a frustrating experience for all concerned, Essex Police Federation says. When it works well, working closely with other forces can help reduce crime and\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":134533,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140174"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140315,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140174\/revisions\/140315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/134533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}