Community engagement

Quality of Service Commitment

The White Paper Building Communities, Beating Crime sets out a commitment to guaranteed standards of service to the public, to ensure that members of the public have a consistent, high quality service that meets their needs whenever they are in contact with the police. The national Quality of Service Commitment (QoSC) has been jointly developed by ACPO and the Home Office, and agreed with the APA.

The QoSC sets out public facing service commitments on what the public can expect when they contact the police. It covers the areas below, which reflect the key drivers of satisfaction:

Making it easy to contact us
Providing a professional and high quality service
Dealing with your initial contact
Keeping you informed
Your voice counts

The National Policing Plan (NPP) 2005/8 requires forces to comply with the Commitment by November 2006 and have implementation plans in place by the end of April 2005. Guidance has now been produced by ACPO, APA and the Home Office to assist forces and authorities in planning for and implementing the QoSC. The guidance will be posted on the ACPO intranet and circulated to police authorities.

Points to note:

The guidance sets out the issues which need to be considered in planning to implement the commitment. We have not set a standard template for the plans, since forces are all starting at different points, and facing different challenges in their move towards compliance.
Police authorities have a key role in ensuring that plans are in place, that those plans have taken account of the needs of local service users and that progress towards compliance means that the November 2006 deadline will be met.
Forces and authorities will need to involve their staff and their customers as they develop their plans and implement changes.