Ms Claire Curtis-Thomas (Crosby, Labour)

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what measures are in place to prevent overlap between the work of the Police Standards Unit and the National Centre for Policing Excellence.

Ms Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Crime Reduction, Policing & Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)

The Police Standards Unit (PSU) and the National Centre for Policing Excellence (NCPE) have different and complementary roles with limited overlap between their work.

PSU seeks to improve policing performance through performance monitoring and measurement, for example through the Policing Performance Assessment Framework (PPAF), and through targeted support for police forces.

NCPE seeks to encourage continuous professional development and inform high standards of police practice through its work on doctrine. As part of Centrex (the Central Police Training and Development Authority), for which the Home Office is the sponsor Department, NCPE also offers specialist and technical learning and development courses in a number of areas.

Both organisations have an interest in developing good practice in policing.

This co-ordination is being driven forward by 'Improving Performance through Applied Knowledge' (IPAK). The programme is structured to avoid overlaps or gaps between the work of NCPE and PSU. Key stakeholders of the programme also include Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and Sir David Phillips, the NCPE Director, is a member of the IPAK Programme Board.

At a working level, PSU works closely with NCPE on a variety of areas. For example, the NCPE guidance to the police on the management of volume crime is explicitly intended to sit above the PSU tactical guidance on dealing with domestic burglary, street robbery and vehicle crime.