Victim support and 101 times among new chief constable's priorities

The force is working with a firm to trial the system, which would allow victims to find out about the police’s progress in investigations – rather than have to phone non-emergency line 101.

New chief constable Jason Hogg, speaking to the Oxford Mail about his priorities just days after starting the top job at England’s biggest non-city force, said the ‘Digital 101’ platform was currently being tested and could be in place ‘within months’.

The system would provide ‘automatic updates to people who want updates on how their crime is progressing’, he said.

In part because of a national increase in the number of 999 calls, requiring a response within seconds, the time taken to answer non-emergency 101 line calls has suffered.

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In the past year, 101 callers were waiting an average of six minutes for the phone to be answered by Thames Valley’s call handlers.

Although better than ‘many’ other areas, former murder detective Mr Hogg acknowledges the six minute figure is an average.

“There will have been people waiting longer than that, it is fair to say,” he said.

“A lot of our 101 calls are simply people asking for an update. If we can alter those through a robotic process that will significantly decrease call volume.”

The new pilot system is being developed with a private company and cost ‘either single figures or £10,000 to £20,000’ to develop – significantly less than the £14.4m it spent developing back-office ‘resource planning’ software that it abandoned in 2021.

Mr Hogg told the Oxford Mail that his priorities for his time as chief constable were three-fold: ‘serving victims, fighting crime and building trust’.

“All of those things are linked,” he said.

“When someone’s a victim of crime there’s an opportunity to turn around what the perception of police are really like.

“I want us to be able to answer the phone quickly, particularly around 999s. We need to get to those incidents quickly when people need our help.

“We need our officers to have the confidence to use their powers to make arrests and keep people safe.”

The senior officer said the force was ‘quite frankly not good enough’ at keeping victims of lower-level crimes updated currently, citing officers’ heavy caseloads.

Inspectors last year described officers’ workloads – particularly in the control room and domestic violence teams – as ‘unmanageable’.

“Internally, a significant challenge for me is to find ways we can reduce that demand so our officers can come to work every day, have the time to be proactive and prevent crime, investigate crime thoroughly and keep victims updated,” Mr Hogg said.

Chief Constable Jason Hogg was speaking to reporters at Kidlington police headquarters this month Picture: Oxford Mail (Image: Oxford Mail)

The chief constable said he and the police and crime commissioner, Matthew Barber, were ‘at one’ in their commitment to invest in neighbourhood policing.

Earlier this year, Mr Barber said he was expecting the force to have hired an additional 80 officers by the end of March as part of a government-funded recruitment boost.

Mr Hogg said: “During my time as chief constable we will see more neighbourhood police officers on the streets.” The police and crime commissioner is expected to make an announcement this month about recruitment of further officers.

Asked why, if neighbourhood policing was at the ‘centre of everything’ Thames Valley Police did, there were proposals to sell certain rural police stations like that in Faringdon and move officers into neighbouring fire stations, he said: “We need to put people before bricks and we need a modern estate.

“I would rather have fewer buildings but those buildings we have of good quality, so they’re great places to work.”

The force had a ‘big estate’, he said, with ageing buildings the upkeep of which had to be paid for out of Thames Valley’s revenue budget.