Skills for Justice responds to the launch of the Police Industry Charter

Published by Skills for Justice

This week a new charter was launched to set the foundational principles upon which industry partners, whatever their product or services, together with UK policing can collectively adhere to. It was launched by the BlueLight Commercial in conjunction with National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC), the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC), RISC (Security and Resilience Industry Suppliers Community), the Home Office and the Office of the Police Chief Scientific Advisor.

Signatories commit to

Designing products, services and systems on the principle of interoperability first.
Adopting a Maximum Transparency by Default (MTBD) position for products and services.
Supporting the professional development of practitioners and senior leaders.
Supporting UK policing in delivering sustainability.
Collaboration and partnership.

These principles align perfectly to how Skills for Justice operate as a transparent, collective and collegial charity.

Interoperability for us means focussing on skills and embedding core competencies across the wider justice sector. This allows for workforce transferability, taking sector experience across the many organisations and public bodies responsible for community safety, and creating shared knowledge to facilitate the many collaborations that these organisations carry out on a day-to-day basis.

Our services support technical developments within policing, for example our workforce planning services align to current and future ERP systems whilst our research, academic and evaluation services utilise data from any collection of Record Management Systems.

We are keen champions of professional development throughout our work within the sector – regularly developing qualifications and apprenticeships and offering quality assurance of training. Role and specialism pathways are key to ensuring that the workforce has the necessary knowledge and understanding to provide effective police forces.

Our sister organisation, SFJ Awards, is also involved in this process, as a regulated Awarding Organisation and approved apprenticeships End-Point Assessment Organisation working in partnership with police and other criminal justice training centres across the UK to develop the workforce.

Matt Girdlestone, Client Director at Skills for Justice, comments:

“Having spent 15 years in policing across operational and IT roles, I completely understand and support the principles that underpin this charter. This is a great initiative from policing and a really clear way to bring suppliers along with them in a drive and effort to foster better systems and services that meet the complex demand environment that forces work within.

“We are particularly pleased to see the inclusion of sustainability – an ever-growing concern in the face of the need to combat the effects of the climate emergency. We are currently undergoing a transformation in this area to make a commitment to net zero initiatives and think about how we can embed this across our service provision to increase our social value proposition – it is great to see the same efforts being committed to across the policing landscape.”

This charter allows policing and suppliers, like us, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and deliver improvements together – ensuring, ultimately, better public services and better outcomes for service users.

As the Sector Skills Council for Justice, we take pride in hosting events and producing membership materials that facilitate knowledge sharing and the crossing of organisational borders.

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