PCD 1587 Community Engagement Review – EY contract variation

PCD 1587 Community Engagement Review – EY contract variation 

• The Mayor’s Action Plan for Transparency, Accountability and Trust in Policing made a commitment to overhaul community scrutiny structures in London to ensure they are more transparent, accountable and representative.  

• Black Thrive were commissioned to undertake an extensive consultation exercise on the future for a more representative and effective framework of community-led scrutiny of policing.  

• The Black Thrive report makes a series of recommendations and MOPAC must now consider how best to take them forward. 

• This work will enable delivery of a Mayoral commitment and support the Met’s delivery of the Casey Review recommendations and priorities set out by the Commissioner in the New Met for London strategy.  

• This decision seeks approval to vary an existing contract for the provision of additional capabilities across a number of areas, including user-led service design; demand and capacity modelling and commissioning and target operating model (TOM) design and delivery, to develop costed options for the future target operating model for community scrutiny.   

The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime is recommended to:   

Approve the variation of the Ernst & Young LLP (EY) contract up to a maximum value of £100,000.  This will bring the total contract value to £595,270.  

PART I - NON-CONFIDENTIAL FACTS AND ADVICE TO THE DMPC 

1. Introduction and background  

1. In June 2022 MOPAC commissioned Black Thrive to specifically explore what the wider future of community engagement and community-led scrutiny should look like to better represent and build trust and confidence with London’s Black communities.  

2. This work delivers on two key commitments in the Mayor’s Action Plan for Transparency, Accountability and Trust in Policing (2020). 

3. The consultation ran from October 2022 to March 2023 

4. A multi-disciplinary working group, including young people was convened to work with Black Thrive to develop the recommendations which include: 

1. Appointing independent body, commissioned and funded by MOPAC, to support and oversee pan-London and locally led engagement and scrutiny of policing in London. 

2. Implement a centralised platform where communities can collectively agree on priorities, collaborate on solutions and have a transparent means to track the implementation and effectiveness of community led police engagement and accountability initiatives. 

3. The new framework should provide leadership and development opportunities for young people 

4. Providing substantial resource and investment, a dynamic communication strategy and the supporting management, support and communications infrastructure so that all communities are aware of and have equal access to these mechanisms. 

2. Issues for consideration  

1. The Black Thrive report provides a useful, and more in-depth evidence base for this work for MOPAC than ever before. MOPAC now needs to determine how this work could best be delivered, taking into account the consultation findings, MOPAC, community and MPS resources and capacity and the work underway to deliver the Casey Review recommendations and the New Met for London strategy.  

2. MOPAC has already identified the need to bring in additional resources and technical skills to support delivery specifically in relation to additional capabilities related to user-led service design and demand, and capacity and cost modelling.    

3. The complexity of this work to date, and the need to build trust with communities to support participation in further consultation, resulted in the work taking longer than expected.  There is significant interest in this work and given the potential positive impact on trust and confidence, a need to move forward as quickly as possible. The addition of specialist capacity will enable MOPAC to more quickly identify how the recommendations can be progressed to improve outcomes. 

4. EY will gather a carefully selected groups of expert stakeholders both internally and externally to develop costed targeted operating models on how best to deliver scrutiny well across a broader range of police powers than is commonly currently covered. Specifically: 

• Stop and search 

• Handcuffing 

• Use of taser 

• Strip searching 

• MTIPS (more thorough intimate parts search) 

• They will also scope the feasibility of scrutinising local complaints and misconduct data. 

5. As such, it is proposed that EY be contracted to deliver this work through a variation to their existing contract for Consultancy Support with MOPAC to take advantage of the additional skills and capacity to develop costed options for the target operating model. 

3. Financial Comments 

The maximum budget requirement for this work totals £100,000 in 2023/24. This will be funded by the 2023/24 Strategy budget.  

4. Legal Comments  

4.1      MOPAC’s general powers are set out in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 (the 2011 Act). Section 3(6) of the 2011 Act provides that MOPAC must “secure the maintenance of the Metropolitan Police Service and secure that the Metropolitan Police Service is efficient and effective.” Under Schedule 3, paragraph 7 MOPAC has wide incidental powers to “do anything which is calculated to facilitate, or is conducive or incidental to, the exercise of the functions of the Office.” Paragraph 7(2) (a) provides that this includes entering into contracts and other agreements. 

4.2 The Mayor's Office for Policing Crime is a contracting authority as defined in the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 ("the Regulations"). All awards of public contracts for goods and/or services valued at £181,302 or above will be procured in accordance with the Regulations. The original contract with EY was procured in August 2023. 

4.3 Paragraph 4.13 of the MOPAC Scheme of Delegation and Consent provides that the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC) has delegated authority to approve all unforeseen variations and extensions to contracts with an original value of £500,000 or above, when the variation or extension is greater than 10% of the original value and/or is for a period of more than 12 months.