Information about the role of a response sergeant, including the role purpose, key responsibilities and the skills required.
About the role
A response sergeant is a response position within the community policing sector. It's a team leader role in the policing professional profiles.
Role purpose
Response sergeants provide daily supervision, guidance and support of constables and coordinate, monitor and where necessary respond to frontline policing activity.
Key responsibilities
Key responsibility statements show the accountabilities for someone in this role. They focus on what is done, not how it is done.
- Supervising and providing visible and effective leadership to a team of officers, managing their welfare and ensuring appropriate care and support is in place to enable an effective response policing service.
- Supporting individuals by assessing capabilities and needs, agreeing appropriate plans and activities to enable personal and professional development and potential progression.
- Monitoring and managing the performance of a response team and the individuals in the team, devising and implementing effective strategies to identify issues and improve team and individual performance to ensure adherence to professional standards and Code of Ethics.
- Negotiating with other partners, teams and departments, balancing threat, harm, risk and vulnerability to ensure an effective service.
- Providing specialist advice and guidance to ensure that response policing is delivered within appropriate policies and legislation and achieves the best possible outcomes.
- Co-ordinating and controlling appropriate frontline responses and investigations, directing activities and resources, managing risks and reviewing progress to deliver effective response policing that supports law enforcement and enables public safety.
- Supervising and monitoring the handling and submission of information, intelligence, evidence and record keeping, ensuring alignment with legislation, policies and guidance to enable effective law enforcement and the initiation of criminal proceedings.
- Taking tactical control of an incident in support of the initial response officers, and where appropriate liaise with supervision, partners and other agencies to develop initial and dynamic working strategies.
- Employing and communicating effective processes to interpret and convert strategic objectives into tactical options and capabilities.
Competencies, values and core skills
The competency and values framework (CVF) provides clear expectations for everyone working in policing. It describes the behaviours required by police officers and staff to be effective in their roles and uphold the uphold the Code of Ethics for policing.
Competencies
The CVF has six competencies, which are split into levels. These levels can be used flexibly to allow for a better fit with frontline and non-frontline policing roles, and at different levels of seniority. This ensures that there is consistency throughout all the policing professional profiles. Some roles may contain different CVF levels due to the specialist nature of the role. Those working at higher levels should also fulfil the requirements of the lower levels.
This role should be operating at or working towards the following competencies.
- We are emotionally aware – Level 2: supervisor or middle manager
- We take ownership – Level 2: supervisor or middle manager
- We collaborate – Level 1: practitioner
- We support and inspire – Level 2: supervisor or middle manager
- We analyse critically – Level 2: supervisor or middle manager
- We are innovative and open-minded – Level 2: supervisor or middle manager
Values
The CVF has three values that apply to everyone in policing, regardless of their role or seniority.
Core skills
All roles in policing have nine core skills in common. These are split into levels that represent the different levels of policing. This role should be operating at or working towards the following core skills.
Education, qualifications and experience
Previous education, qualifications and experience
- Substantive sergeant or have met the force requirements for temporary or acting promotion.
- Experience of attending incidents and problem solving, particularly in difficult circumstances, including major and critical incidents and in the application of joint emergency services interoperability programme (JESIP) principles
- Experience of applying the national decision model and the 10 principles of risk.
In-role education, qualifications and experience
- None specified.
Continuing professional development
Continuing professional development (CPD) enables everyone in policing to develop and gain recognition for their professional skills, knowledge and competence. CPD ensures that we continue to provide high-quality policing to keep the public safe and help to drive career aspirations. Discussion of CPD is usually included as part of professional development review (PDR) conversations.
Learning and accreditation
To achieve effective performance in the role, the following training should be met.
- Annual taser, public order public safety (POPS) and public and police safety training (PPST).
- Complete all core training and learning required by the force.
- Any exemptions to learning and accreditation requirements are at chief constable discretion, in line with the local force policy.
Professional development
This role should consider the following CPD:
- maintaining knowledge and understanding of police regulations, legislation and College of Policing guidance, good practice and any local policy applicable to the operational police context and leading and managing teams
- maintaining and updating knowledge, understanding and skills relating to legislation policy and practice across all functional policing areas of operational responsibility
- maintaining knowledge and understanding of new approaches identified by evidence-based policing research and problem solving, test and synthesise these into working practice, championing innovation and changes to practice
- maintaining a working knowledge and understanding of new and evolving crime threats and priorities and current good practice to tackle these to enable a pro-active and preventative approach
- maintaining personal resilience through understanding the health and wellbeing of yourself and supporting others to do the same
- identifying and sharing ways to enable continuous and public-focused improvement to the service
- maintaining knowledge and understanding of performance management process and ensure they are implemented effectively when managing teams
Related roles
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