A police race action plan for England and Wales, which was partly a response to the Black Lives Matter movement, is at risk of being deprioritised when central funding finishes, a monitoring group has said.
The Independent Scrutiny and Oversight Board (ISOB) fears that local forces have not been adequately prepared to take over responsibility for the plan when central police funding and oversight ends at the end of March next year.
It is the ISOB’s last year of oversight, raising concerns about whether there will be adequate scrutiny of the plan, which aims to tackle prejudice directed against the public and officers.
Abimbola Johnson, the chair of the ISOB, said: “[The plan] was developed by the police itself, which to their credit was done in 2020 under the Conservative government, which didn’t prioritise work that looked at anti-racism. But it also meant that there wasn’t that central government oversight of the programme and there never has been.
“Without that happening and then without the central [policing] team, there are questions as to how it’s going to remain a priority. What’s going to be the impetus to continue to invest in this work?”
The ISOB’s annual report, published on Thursday, says: “As it stands, the programme is not ready to be handed over to local forces and national police leads.”
Among the concerns are that the plan’s aims are not clearly understood across policing and forces do not fully understand what is required of them.
The report welcomes the development of a “maturity matrix”, a first-of-its-kind public-facing dashboard to track anti-racism delivery against outcomes at force level, by the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC). But the ISOB expressed concerns that it was not yet operational.
“It makes things more transparent but it’s a very, very complex piece of work and that requires them to start training officers on how to use it, making sure that non-police bodies know how to access it, making sure that it speaks for them in a way that helps them with their work around accountability,” Johnson said.
Continuing concerns identified by the ISOB include racial disparities in stop and search, use of force and workforce outcomes. They also include poor data collection on ethnicity, limiting the ability to track progress or to spot harm.
In the report, the chief constable of Avon and Somerset police, Sarah Crew, says: “Acknowledging institutional racism is only the starting point. What matters is what we do next, and whether our actions match our intentions.”
The ISOB wants the Home Office to take a hands-on approach with local forces to ensure a focus on anti-racism, address data gaps, create an inspection framework to assess compliance with the plan and coordinate expert-led scrutiny of it.
The plan’s programme director, Alison Heydari, a temporary deputy assistant Met commissioner, said black representation among police officers was up 25%, dismissals for discrimination had quadrupled and race disparity had fallen in relation to a range of police powers since the plan was launched.
But she added: “More must be done, especially as local forces take greater ownership of the plan from next year. The police race action plan is a long-term commitment that policing must continue, which will benefit all the communities we serve.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Racism has no place in policing and it is vital that forces reflect the diverse communities they serve. We support the aims of the police race action plan and are committed to working with police leaders to ensure necessary progress is made.”
