“Investigators were struggling to keep up with demand”: Beds Police told to improve how it investigates crimes - but report praises work to tackle knife crime

The findings are part of the PEEL report which looks at Police Effectiveness, Efficiency and Legitimacy inspection (PEEL).

But Chief Constable Trevor Rodenhurst KPM said that the force has improved since the inspectors’ visit and vowed to “continue to develop our processes and people to ensure we are giving the best service possible to the public”.

And there was praise for some areas – including knife crime prevention, using automated chatbot technology to signpost people to relevant agencies, working with schools in the county, and for having a strong approach to male violence against women and girls.

Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner John Tizard said: "I know that there is much work underway to improve performance and I am confident that the Chief Constable has the plans and the drive continuous performance." He added: "My role is to hold the Chief Constable to account, and I will be scrutinising data and performance reports as he implements plans to address the report findings.”

The report deemed Bedfordshire Police as ‘good’ at recording crime, adequate across seven areas including responding to the public and protecting vulnerable people, and ‘requires improvement’ in investigating crime.

It was told to ensure staff have sufficient skills and experience to carry out quality investigations.

As of the end of March 2024, Bedfordshire Police had only 245 trained detectives, despite needing 412.

The report stated: “This means serious and complex crimes are often managed by inexperienced investigators who aren’t detectives.”

During the inspection, HMICFRS found the criminal investigation department (CID) and protecting vulnerable people teams had “low morale”.

The report stated: “We found examples where frontline investigators were managing crimes without the training or skills to do so. In one example, a police constable working in a detective role was investigating 29 crimes at once, 18 of which were rapes.

“We found that CID teams often only had half the personnel they needed on duty. This meant investigators were struggling to keep up with demand.”

Those in the CID teams “spent too much time completing basic enquiries that should have been completed by the first officer attending”. The inspector found examples of detectives chasing up uniformed colleagues to upload CCTV, or taking statements the officers who first responded should have completed.

The focus on violence against women and girls was highlighted by the report. There has been an increase in Clare’s Law referrals – up to 251 from 73 ‘right to know’ applications. And an increased use of Sexual Risk Orders and Sexual Harm Prevention Orders, going 55 to 104.

Bedfordshire Police was told to improve the time it takes to answer calls - whether those be emergencies or not.

The report read: “In the year ending 31 July 2024, Bedfordshire Police answered 84.6 per cent of 999 calls within 10 seconds. This was below the standard expected of forces in England and Wales of answering 90 per cent of 999 calls within 10 seconds.

“If forces don’t answer calls quickly enough it can mean losing both public confidence and investigative opportunities to keep communities safe.”

On a more positive note, the report praised work to keep communities safe, stating: “We found this is having positive results in areas such as Luton where prevention work has reduced all crime in the Dallow ward by 38 per cent.”

The force created 75 problem-solving plans for schools across the county and found 14 schools that needed more focused crime prevention activity through regular visits.

CC Rodenhurst KPM said: “This report makes clear that Bedfordshire is a well-led force which is on the front foot despite our financial challenges. Those challenges are documented in the report, showing our funding is at the lower end of police forces across England and Wales, despite facing the same demand of incidents and calls.

“It also highlights the brilliant work being carried out by our people and we will continue to invest in their wellbeing and development.

“The report recognises the positive work being carried out in Bedfordshire including our focus on innovation, prevention work around knife crime and our huge improvements in our 999 performance with calls now answered within an average of just five seconds.

Another area of praise was for how the force reviews all stops and searches involving children.

The report stated: “The force considers the welfare and well-being of any children that it searches. The public protection unit hub reviews all stop and searches of children and checks that a safeguarding referral has been completed.

“The multi-agency safeguarding hub reviews these cases every day and prioritises them based on risk before working with local authority partners to make sure appropriate safeguarding measures for the children are in place.”

Despite the force not yet complying with the College of Policing national curriculum for stop and search and use of force, HMICFRS said: “We estimate that 93.1 per cent (with a confidence interval of +/- 4.9 per cent) of all stop and searches carried out by the force during this period had reasonable grounds recorded.”

For those incidents where officers use force, Bedfordshire Police “needs to improve the review of body-worn video”.

The report explained that the force “correctly uses body-worn video in 98 per cent of all cases”.

The document read: “During our inspection, we found that supervisors didn’t always review body-worn video recorded at use of force incidents. The force is assessing ways to improve in this area. This will help scrutiny panels and supervisors to provide valuable feedback to officers and staff to help the force improve.”

The integration of AI and Amazon Web Services in investigating crime and keeping people safe was also mentioned in the report.

The Chief Constable added: “Since the inspection we have already made good progress against the areas identified for improvement – such as increasing our solved rates, retaining and training more detectives, and introducing new dashboards to rank our outstanding suspects in order of threat and risk.”