Top Cops: Humberside Police named UK Police Service of the Year

‘OUR COMMUNITIES DESERVE THE BEST’: Humberside Police Chief Constable Lee Freeman

Humberside Police has been named UK Police Service of the Year at a public sector improvement awards.

The force won Gold at this year’s Public Sector Transformation awards in London, run by the Improvement and Efficiencies Social Enterprise (iESE).

Humberside Police was the Silver winner in the 2021 awards.

The award is given to a police force that shows outstanding transformation, with Humberside recognised for its “outstanding service improvement, completely transforming the force to promote an accessible presence and local based working”.

In particular, Humberside Police was recognised for its innovative approach to supporting those in mental health crisis, along with its wider transformation and improvements over the last five years.

With police officers often first on the scene, the force acknowledged that better partnership working was needed to better support those in need. The “Right Care, Right Person” initiative is the first of its kind where police and healthcare services work hand in hand to get the right care to those who need it in more effective way.

Humberside Police Chief Constable Lee Freeman said: “Members of our community who are experiencing mental health crisis need the same level of clinical support afforded to those who suffer physical injuries.

“What ‘Right Care, Right Person’ has done is put the individual right at the heart of our decision making, and this means that a police officer is often not the right person to be providing this care. By working with partners and supporting them financially to remove barriers, we are now supporting those individuals in a much more appropriate way.

“What this has meant is that more than 1,000 officer hours per month have been reallocated to enable us to focus on what our communities want us to be doing, that being proactive policing.

“Humberside Police arrest more suspects per police officer than any other force. Crucially, this is also backed up by the force having the highest detection rate for overall crime in the country as well.

“Our communities asked us to get on the front foot with reducing crime and ASB [antisocial behaviour] and to also bring offenders to justice, and my officers and staff are doing this as well as any force in England and Wales."

Since 2017, Humberside Police has added a further 650 officers to its ranks. It is also one of the leading forces for call-handling performance, and securing some of the highest positive outcome rates for victims, it said.

The force also recorded the country’s best results in force morale in the annual Police Federation Pay and Morale Survey.

Mr Freeman added: “Humberside Police has been on a transformational journey and we’re still on that path. When I took on the role of chief constable in 2017, it was clear that the fundamental culture of the force needed to change.

“From day one, I said that the force should be seen as one of the best forces in the country as our communities had a right to expect that and our staff and officers were that good. They have repaid that trust many times over.

“This award is a recognition of five years of continued effort from across the entire team at Humberside Police.

“We should all feel proud for what we have achieved to date. It has been a complete cultural change at every level, and I’d like to thank the staff for their continued support, without which, the transformation we’ve seen would not have been possible.”