2022 Decisions

With the increased use of information technology by the Force, there has been a subsequent increase in IT equipment installed in one of the main IT rooms located at Euston Street.

This has meant the cooling plant currently installed no longer has capacity to keep the equipment cool particularly on hotter days or in the event of cooling plant servicing/breakdown. If this is not resolved there is a significant risk of the Force losing some or all of its IT systems. The cooling plant needs upgrading at a budget cost of £320K.

Procurement are looking to make a direct award to Sepura Limited for 2,200 x Handheld Radio Bundles, 4,400 x Accessories and 2,200 Licence Packs using the Police Digital Service (PDS) Airwave framework and due to the value require PCC contract signature and sea the contract.

The Community Fund: Diversion from Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) and Crime is a collaboration between the OPCC and VRN reflecting our shared commitment to prevention and early intervention and the value of partnering with communities in our collective efforts to keep our children and young people safe.

The OPCC ring fenced £100,000 from the Commissioner’s Safety Fund budget for this round, and the VRN match funded this, giving a total budget of £200,000. For this round, applicants could submit bids up to the value of £20,000, with a project duration of between 12 and 24 months.

The Community Fund opened for applications on 26/09/2022 and closed on 24/10/2022 at 17:00. 34 applications were submitted during this time.  The evaluation panel for this round included Kaitlin Trenerry, Commissioning and Contracts Officer (OPCC), Lisa Wilkinson, Community and Young Person Involvement Officer (VRN) and Laura Summers, Lead for Trauma Informed (VRN). The panel individually evaluated each application upon closure of the round and met to moderate their scores on 28/10/2022. Charlotte Highcock, Head of Commissioning (OPCC), adjudicated the moderations, and Grace Strong, Strategic Director (VRN) attended in an advisory capacity. The final score was calculated for each application by taking the average of the 3 evaluators scores.

The Police and Crime Commissioner for Leicestershire has allocated £150,000 for the People Zones Project for the 2022-2023 financial year. There are currently three People Zones, with each area allocated £50,000. This will fund projects/programmes or initiatives, the purpose of which is to support the achievements and objectives across all the People Zones areas.

The PCC has received and considered an application for Community Payback funding in the New Parks People Zone area and has agreed to fund.

In 2021/22 the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) launched his grant programme, The Commissioner’s Safety Fund. The Commissioner’s Safety fund is a grants programme with 6 rounds per year alternating between generic and specialist themed rounds. Round 4 is the second general round of the year.

Round 4 opened for applications on 01/06/2022 and closed on 25/07/2022. 23 applications were submitted during this time. The applications were assessed in line with the Commissioners Safety Fund criteria and moderated by a panel 23/09/2022 – 27/09/2022. 2 applications scored 70% or above, 7 scored 60% or above, 8 scored 50% or above, and 8 scored less than 50%. Following discussion with the Head of Commissioning, the decision was initially made to award those applications that scored 60% or higher, due to the high quality of these applications. However, on further investigation, 2 of those applications were deemed unsuitable for funding on this occasion due to the applications not aligning with the values of the Police and Crime Plan. The successful were presented to the PCC for final approval.  The PCC approved to fund 7 bids in Round 4. This equates to a funding commitment of £65,474.00

In 2021/22 the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) launched his grant programme, The Commissioner’s Safety Fund. The Commissioners Safety fund is grants programme with 6 rounds per year alternating between generic and specialist themed rounds. This decision record relates to the third, specialist round- Children and Young People.

6 applications were received, all of which met the eligibility criteria. All applications were assessed in line with the Commissioners Safety Fund criteria and on the 15th of August the applications were presented to the PCC for final approval.  The PCC approved to fund 5 bids in Round 3.

In 2021/22 the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) launched his grant programme, The Commissioner’s Safety Fund. The Commissioners Safety fund is grants programme with 6 rounds per year alternating between generic and specialist themed rounds. This decision record relates to the second, general round.

19 applications were received, however one of these applications did not meet the eligibility criteria and was eliminated from the evaluation process at this stage. All applications were assessed in line with the Commissioners Safety Fund criteria and on the 15th August the applications were presented to the PCC for final approval.

The PCC approved to fund 11 bids in Round 2 which scored 40% or above. 7 applications were eliminated from the process at this stage due to scoring below 40%.

In April 2022 the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) confirmed that in addition to their core funding, Police and Crime Commissioners would receive an additional £15.7m funding for domestic abuse and sexual violence support services. Police and Crime Commissioners were required to make this funding opportunity available to commissioned services and frontline providers. This opportunity was advertised on the OPCC website and using our mailing list, requesting that providers in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland completed and returned a needs assessment, which was then submitted to the MoJ.

The bids received as part of the provider’s needs assessments totalled £753,581.00

Procurement are looking to award the purchase of 95 workstations, 400 desktops, 400 laptops and 100 laptop bags to XMA Limited after a further competition using the Crown Commercial Service RM6068 Technology Products framework (Hardware lot).

Operation Repeat is as above a door step fraud awareness project with the principal aim of identifying and training key local Health and care professionals to provide fraud awareness messaging to members of their local communities who are vulnerable to fraud.

The Royal Safety Partnership Memorandum of Understanding includes the provision of NDORS Driver Awareness Courses. After taking legal advice it is confirmed that the provision of NDORS Driver Awareness Courses is outside the scope of the Public Procurement regulations and a formal Service Level Agreement (SLA) is to be agreed and signed by both parties.

Procurement are looking to award the supply and fit of tyres and associated products and services contract from 1st October 2022 to 30th September 2025 for a maximum value of £360,000.

When the new police station was built in Oakham in 2015 Estates were asked not to include an FEO (Front Enquiry Office) as it was to be sited at the Rutland County Council Offices, Catmose, Oakham. This remained open until the beginning of COVID when the council contact centre closed. The office has been closed ever since and Rutland County Council have made the decision not to reopen permanently. This has left the Force without an FEO in Rutland and with the new PCC’s commitment to rural policing, efforts have been made to find an alternative location.

The Firearms Department require additional space in the existing firearms building at FHQ. This includes enlarging the locker room because of the increase in kit that each officer now has, and resolving the issue of overcrowded office space.

The proposed work involves extending into the under-croft between Firearms and the Academy, converting the existing firearms classroom, office space, canteen, and enlarging the female locker room. All the lockers in both the male and female locker rooms will be replaced with larger bespoke lockers to house the additional kit.

The Police and Crime Commissioner for Leicestershire has allocated £30,000 from the Commissioning budget to fund projects/programmes or initiatives within the three current People Zone areas, the purpose of which is to support the achievements and objectives across all the People Zones areas. This includes investing in building community and providing interventions which will support parents, children and young people to achieve and make positive choices thereby creating a bedrock from which the community safety objectives of the PCC’s Police and Crime Plan can be achieved in those specific communities.

Leicestershire Police are looking to award a contract to Adecco for the supply of Temporary Labour for a period of 7 years from 3rd September 2022 to 2nd September 2029.

The Force is currently contracted to Veolia and ShredStation for the provision of General Waste and Recycling at all force locations. The current total annual contract value is £56,282.56. The contracts were let after a competitive tendering process through EMSCU for a four-year period until 30th April 2021; an initial extension was approved until 30th April 2022. Under normal circumstances a tender process would now be in place for new contracts to commence from 1st May 2022.

The Police and Crime Commissioner for Leicestershire has allocated £30,000 from the Commissioning budget to fund projects/programmes or initiatives within the three current People Zone areas, the purpose of which is to support the achievements and objectives across all the People Zones areas.

This includes investing in building community and providing interventions which will support parents, children and young people to achieve and make positive choices thereby creating a bedrock from which the community safety objectives of the PCC's Police and Crime Plan can be achieved in those specific communities.

A new contract is required from 1st July 2022 for the lease of photocopiers in the Reprographics department.

The current vehicle body repair framework expires 31st July 2022, we advertised a new framework (three year plus two optional extensions of one year) and received four responses. One tender was disqualified and we are recommending to award a place on the framework to the remaining three tenderers.

Procurement are looking to award Gresham Office Furniture (GOF) a contract for office furniture products and associated services, from 25th April 2022 to 22nd June 2023 plus two optional periods of 1 year for a maximum value of £600,000. The value also includes possible office upfit(s).

In 2021/22 the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) launched his grant programme, The Commissioner's Safety Fund. The Commissioners Safety fund is a grants programme with 6 rounds per year alternating between generic and specialist themed rounds.

This decision record relates to the first specialist themed Violence Against Women and Girls round.

21 applications were received, however of these only 10 met the specialist round criteria. All applications were assessed in line with the Commissioners Safety Fund criteria and on 6th April 2022 the applications were presented to the PCC for final approval and 8 bids were approved.

The current provider on contract for cleaning services is Leicestershire County Council, who subcontract these services to Atalian Servest AMK. The current contract expires on 31st March 2022.  The current annual contract value for cleaning services is £622,873.65 is per annum.

Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARACs) exist to enable public bodies and their commissioned provision to best assess, manage and mitigate the risks faced by those victims within the highest risk domestic abuse relationships. In Leicestershire there is a single MARAC covering the force area and this has been on a remodelling journey since 2017/18.

MARACs were originally set up with the support of SafeLives and have existed for many years now and are widely recognised as being a key feature of any local response to domestic abuse. In 2017/18 our approach to MARACs was to have a monthly meeting where the highest risk cases were discussed. With monies from the Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Transformation Fund the MARAC was developed from a single monthly meeting to weekly and eventually daily meetings.

The PCC’s contribution to the MARAC for 2022/23 is currently £20,000. It is proposed to increase contributions across the partnership to add capacity and the PCC’s contribution to this would see an additional £8,700 for 2022/23.

Procurement are seeking to award a contract to SocialSignIn Limited (trading as Orlo) for a period of two years, from 1st April 2022 to 31st March 2024 with two optional extensions of one year to extend until 31st March 2026.

The Force currently leases a property on Braunstone Lane, Leicester for the annual rent of £12,000 from the Hinckley and Rugby Building Society. Included in the terms of the lease is the option to acquire the freehold interest of the premises and discussions with the Society have been ongoing with this objective in mind. As such, the sum of £315,000 has been provisionally agreed with the Society, with each party paying its own legal fees. This figure is considered to be a fair and reasonable price in the current residential property market.

Procurement are seeking to award a contract to XPS Administration for an initial contract period from 1st April 2022 until 31st March 2026 with an option at Leicestershire Police's sole discretion to include a further three year extension until 31st March 2029.

The Police and Crime Commissioner for Leicestershire has allocated £30,000 from the Commissioning budget to fund projects/programmes or initiatives within the three current People Zone areas, the purpose of which is to support the achievements and objectives across all the People Zones areas.

This includes investing in building community and providing interventions which will support parents, children and young people to achieve and make positive choices thereby creating a bedrock from which the community safety objectives of the PCC's Police and Crime Plan can be achieved in those specific communities.

People Zones is an initiative that was created by the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC) in 2018. People Zones are geographical locations across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (LLR) which have been identified through crime, public health and census data.

People Zones aim to provide communities with an opportunity to shape and become involved in work designed to build stronger, safer and more resilient communities.

To inform the direction of this work, the OPCC is looking to commission one provider to undertake community consultation and research into the People Zone areas by adopting an Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) approach, focusing on people and place assets within the communities.

The Police and Crime Commissioner holds a contract with The Hampton Trust. The Hampton Trust provide an out of court disposal programme for perpetrators of domestic abuse, known as CARA. Leicestershire Police refer eligible perpetrators of domestic abuse i.e. those issued an out of court disposal to the programme

Historically, referrals to the service have been low; a number of factors more recently have influenced demand and these were discussed in detail in the meeting. Currently we are now in a position whereby the number of referrals has exceeded that covered by the contract value and a overspend has developed.

In order to correct this position a plan to split the overspend £9,750 between the three parties involved (Leicestershire Police, The Hampton Trust and the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner) has been proposed.

The Force is currently contracted to Mitie care and Custody for the provision of Medical Services (Custody) and SARC services. The current total annual contract value for the SARC element is £261,684.

The services provided at the SARC include healthcare assessment and forensic examinations on victims of sexual assaults. Screening with a view to referral to community services, health promotion and disease prevention.