Community engagement form to monitor neighbourhood policing activities

The aim of the 1559 community engagement form is to monitor the effectiveness of Northamptonshire Police’s neighbourhood policing activities.

The intended outcomes of the 1559 community engagement form are to:

• improve the recording of police interactions with the local communities
• improve relations with communities that traditionally interact less often with, or have a lower level of trust and confidence in the police 

Launched in 2018, the 1559 community engagement form intended to monitor neighbourhood policing activities, in line with force and national requirements. 

The prevention manager collaborated with engagement role holders and neighbourhood teams to create the online form. The information service department (ISD), now called digital, data and technology department (DDAT), was responsible for uploading the form onto force Forms. This enabled email notifications about interactions to be sent to sergeants and line managers. 

The force uses several metrics to measure the effectiveness of its work with local communities, including:

• type of community
• outcomes from the event
• concerns raised
• actions taken
• value of the event

Neighbourhood police officers and police community support officers complete the 1559 form on their mobile devices when they attend community events. This includes public surgeries and events that are designed to get people involved, school intervention activities, and any other event linked to force or locally identified priorities.

The 1559 form is completed by officers and administered by sector-coordinators on neighbourhood teams. Line managers and sergeants are notified when the form is completed. A review of the form is conducted to determine the effectiveness of the officer’s interaction and whether a follow-up visit is required.

Initially, the data was then mapped against local communities to identify areas where additional activity could take place. The mapping exercise revealed that there were missed opportunities to interact with the black community within Northamptonshire. In response, the force assigned local neighbourhood officers and police community support officers to visit black community members.

In 2023, a Qlik app was designed to report on the data to enable neighbourhood policing team (NPT) sergeants and inspectors to scrutinise police attendance at events and determine whether the force had resourced and engaged effectively. The data is captured centrally by the force’s analysts into Qlik and influence community engagement strategies. The 1559 form has existed for over five years and has been regularly reviewed and updated to assist with gaining insight as well as opportunities for future engagement.

Northamptonshire Talking

In August 2024, Northamptonshire Police collaborated with VisaV to launch the Northamptonshire Talking platform, a local version of Neighbourhood Alert. This free messaging service provides news and updates on policing as well as community matters. Northamptonshire Talking hosts the community engagement form, with the structure and format remaining unchanged.

The platform has a steering group which has oversight of the data. On a monthly basis, this data is shared with local neighbourhood sergeants and inspectors. Each engagement is signed off by a local sergeant and is used to determine the effectiveness of the officer’s interaction.

Other forces are using the Neighbourhood Alert systems for engagement events. Each event type can be set up with the main parameters. Some recorded events will not have the community invite function enabled for events such as school visits. Other events will have bespoke invitations within a given radius. 

In November 2024, Northamptonshire Police were invited to present the success of launching the engagement tracker at the Visa-V annual summit.

Cost and resourcing

The cost of the community engagement 1559 form and the Northamptonshire Talking platform has been minimal, because time, resourcing, and reporting are managed within the force. 

An evaluation was launched in 2025 and is being led by Northamptonshire Police. It aims to determine which types of engagement activities are being undertaken by the force and whether there are any geographical differences across the county.

On Northamptonshire Talking, the force has invited members of the community to events, to establish if they will be attending and to collate their feedback. The evaluation will look at how the community is providing feedback to the platform and how many individuals are providing event feedback. The evaluation aims to determine if supervisors are adequately using the feedback to help inform operational activity and future engagement events. 

The community engagement 1559 form is regularly reviewed and updated. The form and Northamptonshire Talking provide an opportunity for a two-way dialogue between the community and the police. The platform has extended its functionality to invite people to certain events and gather their feedback afterwards.

An engagement tracker has been introduced which allows NPTs to record their abstractions within the Northamptonshire Talking database. This enables the force to obtain important data if officers are being abstracted from their beats for neighbourhood policing activities. This is data that has not previously been readily available to the force.  

• A challenge the force faced was simplifying the process of creating and launching the community engagement 1559 form. In its inception, the form captured basic data. Once it was shown to be an effective way of gathering information, the form subsequently became longer to include feedback for the stop and search panel and Police Race Action Plan.
• The accuracy of data can be variable as it relies on assessment from the person completing the form. Large scale events can be hard to judge in terms of numbers or the demographics of people attending.
• When reviewing and presenting data it is essential not to skew data. Consistency and quality checking is important, for instance, if sections of the form are continually missed, this must be addressed.
• There have been some individuals in force more engaged in form completion than others. However, this has improved since the results are now reviewed as standard performance reviews and in strategic meetings.