How we're working to achieve the ambitions in our corporate strategy.
We are committed to achieving the ambitions set out in this strategy. Delivering on this commitment will require:
- improving how we work
- improved partnership between the College and policing
- a sustainable funding model
Dynamic, relevant and connected
Over the next four years, the purpose of the College in supporting policing to reduce crime and keep people safe will not change. However, we will need to evolve our culture, our structure and how we work if we are to successfully deliver our strategic ambitions and become the dynamic, relevant and connected College that we need to be.
We will build on the success of our response to the pandemic to ensure that our academic rigour is coupled with a dynamic agility to respond and to support policing in dealing with unforeseen events and challenges.
As set out in the Fundamental review, we will build on the close work that goes on daily between the College and the front line. We will improve our engagement with each force, provide products and services that meet the needs of officers and staff, and ensure that the benefits of the College are available to everyone working in policing.
Our digital infrastructure, website, and management of data and information will provide everyone in policing with an improved experience in the ways that they interact with the College and our services.
A refreshed secondment programme will improve our connection with the front line and will offer officers and staff valuable developmental opportunities to help resolve and respond to perennial policing challenges, as well as new and emerging threats.
Our internal race and diversity programme will ensure that we have a workforce with a diverse range of skills, capabilities and perspectives, as well as an inclusive culture where people feel comfortable and confident to be themselves.
Working in partnership
The ambitions identified in this strategy are about service-wide improvements. The key to their successful implementation and delivery is effective collaboration and cooperation with our partners. In such a complex system, our individual success can only be achieved as a collective success.
As laid out in the Fundamental review, we need our partners to change their approach to the College, thereby contributing to our collective success in delivering for policing and the communities we serve.
We will continue to work closely with our key partners – the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC), His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS), the Home Office, the Association Of Police And Crime Commissioners (APCC), chief constables, police and crime commissioners, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) and the National Crime Agency (NCA) – to build effective partnership working across the policing system.
Sustainable funding
The breadth of the ambitions laid out in this strategy requires a sustainable funding model for the College. There are a number of routes through which we will work to achieve this. Internally, our programme of change will make our business processes more efficient, as well as more effective.
There will be an opportunity for the National Centre for Police Leadership to offer products to other home nations’ forces, as well as operate on a commercial basis in the international policing market, using its position as a centre of excellence to reach into global policing.
The evidence base held by the College will be enhanced by greater international collaboration and engagement, and the College will act as a thought leader on the international stage.
This will help boost innovation in UK policing and will have the added benefit of generating additional income for the College.
There are also opportunities to make our products and services available to the domestic non-police markets, such as community safety partnerships. This will generate additional income, improve the capacity of our partners and ultimately reduce demand on policing.
There has been a welcome investment in policing through the Police Uplift Programme. However, the result has been that there are more police officers but no additional investment to support their professional development. We will continue to work closely with the Home Office to ensure that the opportunity of the Police Uplift Programme is fully realised.
Next steps
We will implement this strategy over the next four years by embedding it into our corporate planning, governance and performance management frameworks, starting with our two-year business plan for 2022-24. This sets out key activity for delivering on our strategic ambitions.
We will track our progress on delivering our strategic ambitions through a new integrated performance framework. This will enable our College Board, staff, and stakeholders to monitor our progress.