100,000 police hours lost on forms

Police officers waste a total of more than 100,000 hours every year filling in forms which are obsolete or which can easily be simplified, a study reveals today.

Chronic red tape and a culture of delay in the courts are starving the front-line fight against crime of resources, even though there are now record numbers of police officers in England and Wales.

Home Secretary David Blunkett will today tell police leaders he will deliver on his promise to slash paperwork to end the frustration officers feel at being kept away from patrol duties and preventing crime by demands at the station.

But it could take as long as five years to revolutionise the way police work, the Home Office concedes.

It has long been known that police face a blizzard of paperwork every time they make an arrest. A Home Office study last year showed only 17 per cent of officers' time was spent actually on patrol and about half their time is spent back at base.

But the true scale of waste is revealed today in a follow-up study by the Policing Bureaucracy Taskforce, headed by Sir David O'Dowd, the former Chief Inspector of Constabulary. Among the time lost needlessly, he discovered:

? 41,250 hours a year were wasted by officers filling in a stolen vehicle form which is no longer needed.

? 34,701 hours a year can be saved by simplifying the Phoenix form used to input data to the Police National Computer.

? Another 13,750 hours can be saved by combining three forms used for investigating nuisance and malicious phone calls.

Mr Blunkett will tell the Police Superintendents' Association conference in Chester that police numbers have now hit a record 129,603, the highest since records began in 1921 and an increase of 3,922 on last year. Figures for London show the Met up from 24,878 to 26,223 in the year to April.

But he will say: "Record numbers of police officers are only going to be successful and effective if we break down the bureaucracy they have got so you get them out of the station and into the communities where people want them."

He had asked Sir David to look at 15 key recommendations for cutting red tape and the detailed findings show there is substantial room for easing the burden. "At the moment 250 forms are in regular use by front-line staff. Forms are repetitive, too long, even redundant," Mr Blunkett will say.

Sir David has found wide discrepancies between forces. In one example, missing-persons forms range from one double-sided sheet in some forces to a 32-page booklet in others. Mr Blunkett believes the number of the forms most used by police can be cut from 15 to nine.

Changes will be announced across three areas - in the station, on the street and in the courts. One idea is to hand out pagers to witnesses so that officers involved in their cases can continue with duties until they are called to give evidence instead of hanging around outside court often for days on end.

Other proposals include trials with video identity parades to save on the average four-and-a-half hours it takes organising a traditional line-up.

The idea of issuing yobs with onthe-spot fines, being piloted in Croydon, is also aimed at cutting the time taken after arrests. The Government hopes its new breed of civilian beat bobbies will increase the uniformed patrolling presence.