Herts Police told to improve vetting management in new report

An independent report published today (November 17) has identified that Hertfordshire Police needs to improve in several areas of its operations.

After a visit in September 2021, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) found that Hertfordshire Police should improve how it manages the vetting of its staff to make sure that people have valid clearance for their roles. It stated: “It was difficult to identify the people in designated posts who had or didn’t have the correct vetting, and the force provided contradictory data.”

In February 2019, Hertfordshire Police had 981 individuals with expired vetting, which had been reduced to 102 by the time of the inspection. The force had not tracked people in non-police roles who required vetting, with 175 staff in these roles having expired vetting.

The police had prioritised counterterrorism checks and security clearance vetting. They had used the date of expiry as a priority, rather than considering people in posts who didn’t have the correct clearance.

This is a risk for the force, HMICFRS says.

The report said: “It should prioritise unvetted staff based on the role they hold and the risk it poses to the organisation.”

Another area for improvement was its system to monitor and respond to disproportionality in its vetting decisions.

Despite having the data, there was no evidence that there was any analysis done of vetting rejection and protected characteristics - which include age, disability, sex, race, religion, marriage, pregnancy and sexual orientation.

It explained: “The force doesn’t analyse the proportion of rejections for applicants with a particular protected characteristic compared to a group without that characteristic.

“As a result, the force has no means of understanding the reasons for any disproportionality and therefore no action is being taken to address it.”

From reports from 2016, 2017 and 2018/19, vetting was a cause for concern and an area for improvement. HMICFRS stated: “We found it still needed to improve the management of its vetting.” As the inspection happened more than a year ago, no graded judgment was provided for this area.

The body identified that Hertfordshire Police was effectively using its IT monitoring software. It had removed the right to use encrypted apps and prohibited the use of work mobiles for personal matters before the inspection. Despite having a counter-corruption strategic threat assessment (STA), there were no profiles of those who might be vulnerable to corruption or people outside the force who might try to corrupt the workforce.

There were no examples found of proactive intelligence collection and Hertfordshire Police was not using its IT monitoring capability to exploit all opportunities. This was something the force was aware of and had allocated additional resources.

HMICFRS also said that the force has made abuse of position for a sexual purpose training mandatory and the subject is discussed during annual performance reviews. The report added: “The workforce recognises that abuse of position for a sexual purpose is serious corruption.”