CHIEF for the CONSTABLE year ended STATEMENT OF March ACCOUNTS 2020 CONTENTS PAGE Preface Preface by the Chief Constable of Thames Valley 2 Narrative report and financial review by the Director of Finance 3 Statement to the Accounts Audit report and opinion 20 Statement of responsibilities for the Statement of Accounts 24 Core Financial Statement and Explanatory notes Movement in reserves statement 25 Expenditure and Funding Analysis 26 Comprehensive income and expenditure statement 27 Balance sheet 28 Cash flow statement 29 Notes to the accounts 30 Supplementary Financial Statement and Explanatory notes Pension fund accounts 58 Annual Governance Statement 59 Glossary of terms 83 Chief Constable Statement of Accounts 2019/20 1 NARRATIVE REPORT AND FINANCIAL REVIEW PREFACE Introduction to the 2019/20 Statement of Accounts by John Campbell, Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police It is now over a year since I took on the position of Chief Constable, Thames Valley Police. The year has been challenging, rewarding and desperately sad. The communities of the Thames Valley and the police family were significantly impacted by the loss of our colleague PC Andrew Harper on 15 August 2019. The nature of Andrew’s death, and his personal circumstances, touched many people. I am proud of how the Force responded to these tragic circumstances. I am also grateful for the many messages of support sent to the Force from the Public. Our thoughts remain with Andrew’s wife, Lissie and all the family. The Police and Crime Commissioner, Anthony Stansfeld was willing to support applying the maximum Council Tax Precept which provided an additional £8.5 million in this financial year. I am pleased to be able to report how this money has been spent in 2019/20. A key issue was call handling in our Contact Management Centres, in particular the time taken to answer 101 non-emergency calls. We aimed to reduce call handling times, by recruiting additional staff to deal with the additional demand and more complex crime and incidents being reported. I am pleased to say that by the end of March 2020 we had reduced the average call waiting times for 101 from at times 7 minutes down to less than 3. I am keen to further improve on this in 20/21. Service delivery was improved by recruiting additional police officers and staff, including police staff investigators. These additional resources as well as focussing on proactive policing meant that we saw an increase of 13% in arrests and 58% increase in Stop and Search with corresponding increases in the seizures of weapons and drugs. Improve our response to complex investigations was also a priority. Our stretched resources are dealing with investigations that at all levels are growing in size and complexity. We have increased the resources in our Economic Crime Unit as a means of disrupting organised crime groups. We have enhanced our gathering of intelligence capability and been able to provide personal issue body worn video devices to our response officers, enabling crucial evidence to be gathered at crime scenes and arrests. We have been working towards developing a truly mobile workforce through upgrading our digital devices and the platforms that we operate on. This has enabled us to respond at speed to facilitate home working and remote working for our staff and officers as an operational response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Delivering core policing services in different ways. In the future the Force will benefit from an additional 183 police officers, as a consequence of the 1st year of the national uplift programme. These officers are due to be recruited by 31 March 2021 but significant numbers have already joined TVP and are currently in training. Finally, I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the public of Thames Valley for their support over the last year. As Chief Constable of your police force and responsible for protecting all those who live, work and visit the Thames Valley I will do all that I can to reduce crime, protect the vulnerable and prosecute those that would do harm. John Campbell QPM Chief Constable. Thames Valley Police Chief Constable Statement of Accounts 2019/20 2 NARRATIVE REPORT AND FINANCIAL REVIEW THE NARRATIVE REPORT Message from the Director of Finance – Linda Waters The Narrative Report pulls together in a single document information on the budget preparation process, final accounts, performance information, medium term financial plans and other contextual information such as workforce numbers and strategic risks. I hope you find it helpful, I would welcome feedback on the content so that we can continue to improve and enhance next year’s narrative report on the 2020/21 accounts. During 2019/20 TVP have achieved significant improvements in actual police officer strength, moving from a position at the start of the year of being below our budgeted establishment to finishing the year ahead of our planned position, well on our way to achieving our 2020/21 target for additional officers (as part of the governments Uplift programme to recruit an additional 20,000 officers over the next three years across the country). This recruitment drive placed significant pressure on our financial and non-financial resources. The additional numbers of officers passing through recruitment and training came at a considerable financial cost. The level of training officers require before they are productively engaged in policing means that, for a period of time, we have the costs of the additional officers but not their operational hours hence the demands on police overtime for example do not decrease in the same period. Fortunately, efficiencies and reduced spend in other areas alongside a slight increase in income has allowed the forced to deliver a small underspend position of £1.2m or 0.26% of our budget. In TVP the implications of delivering a service to meet increasing demand and complexity whilst operating with finite resources is fully appreciated. Considerable work is focused on challenging the effectiveness and efficiency of our service, constantly driving to ensure our resources are directed to the highest priority areas. This is demonstrated by the continuous delivery of our productivity strategy and savings of over £105m over the last 9 years. As a police service we try to anticipate demand and ensure our strategic plans address the changing landscape both in the scope and complexity of crime but also the technology and equipment available to enhance the delivery of our service. But we also always have to be prepared for the unexpected and be ready for an immediate response whatever the circumstances. The Covid-19 pandemic is one of those once in a lifetime challenges which the police service is currently responding to in a direct and positive manner. At this early stage in the pandemic it is very difficult to predict the impact this will have on the forces finances going forward. For 2019/20 the impact is minimal and as can be seen from the financial statements has been absorbed within the existing budgets. Going forward the impact will largely depend on the level of additional funding from the government. Significant additional costs for PPE are being experienced alongside reduced levels of income but the impact of home working where possible and social distancing is reducing travel costs, this is very much a developing picture which I am sure will focus heavily in next year’s statement of accounts. The Statement of Accounts has been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA). It therefore aims to provide information to help the reader: Understand the overarching financial position of the PCC (and Thames Valley Police) Have confidence that the PCC has spent public money wisely and has been accounted for in an appropriate manner Be assured that the financial position of the PCC (and Group) is sound and secure The style and format of the accounts complies with CIPFA standards and is similar to that of previous years. The structure of this Narrative Report is set out below. Chief Constable Statement of Accounts 2019/20 3 NARRATIVE REPORT AND FINANCIAL REVIEW 1. Explanation of the PCC and Group 2. Introduction to Thames Valley 3. Financial performance 4. Non-financial performance 5. Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic 6. People 7. Corporate risks and uncertainties 8. Summary and conclusion 1. EXPLANATION OF THE PCC AND GROUP The Police & Crime Commissioner (PCC) and the Chief Constable are established as separate legal entities. The PCC is elected by the public every four years to secure the maintenance of an efficient and effective police force and to hold the chief constable to account for the exercise of his functions and those of persons under his direction and control. The Chief Constable has a statutory responsibility for the control, direction and delivery of operational policing services in the Thames Valley Police area. This set of accounts focuses on those discrete activities which the PCC is directly responsible for, such as community safety and commissioning services for victims and witnesses of crime, as well as the “PCC Group” which includes all aspects of operational policing under the direction and control of the Chief Constable. The Chief Constable has produced a separate set of accounts which explains how the resources provided by the PCC have been used to deliver operational policing services. The Net Revenue Budget for 2019/20 was £419.9 million, of which £7.5 million was under the PCC’s direct control. 2. AN INTRODUCTION TO THAMES VALLEY Thames Valley Police (TVP) is the largest non–metropolitan police force in England and Wales with a Force area of 2,216 square miles covering the three counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.