The way that complaints and compliments about Northamptonshire Police are dealt with is changing on February 1 to give the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner a much greater role in police complaints, strengthening the independence of the process and increasing public confidence.
The new Customer Service Team
From February, any expression of dissatisfaction with the service provided by Northamptonshire Police will be recorded.
This will give the Commissioner a clear overview of the issues that are causing concern to the public. Any lessons to learn will now be captured on a Forcewide basis and passed to the Chief Constable to support on-going improvements.
Complaints made over the phone or online will now generally be received by the PFCC’s Customer Service Team. If the complaints are of a less serious nature – meaning that they don’t contain allegations that would be considered misconduct – then the PFCC’s office will try to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
This will usually be by providing the complainant with an explanation or an apology and the assurance that lessons have been learned and shared across the Force.
More serious complaints will be recorded and passed to the Force’s Professional Standards Department to investigate.
These changes will give the public a better, swifter and more consistent service that is clearly independent and that they can have confidence in. And under the new system compliments will also be captured.
Northamptonshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner Stephen Mold said: “I am pleased that my Office now has a stronger role in dealing with less serious complaints about Northamptonshire Police as that clearly underlines the independence of the process and will also allow us to make sure that we use the feedback to improve policing in this county.”
