Cleveland Police Force has committed to a root and branch improvement in its approach to the handling of domestic abuse.
The College of Policing (COP) has introduced a training package called Domestic Abuse Matters. This training can be delivered by any of their three recommended providers.
Domestic Abuse Matters training equips and champions professionals across the UK to help them spot early signs of domestic abuse. It also helps professionals to understand the tactics used by perpetrators.
The training aims to change the attitudes, culture and behaviour of police frontline response personnel to domestic abuse.
Cleveland Police has committed to investing in training to drive forward this improvement. This will begin with the roll out of Domestic Abuse Matters for the following categories of police personnel:
- Uniformed response officers
- Neighbourhood officers
- PCSO’s
- Front desk staff
- Call takers
- All investigators including DA specialists and those in PPU PSD investigators and decision makers Prisoner Handling.
The agreed budget is £35,000 to train all members of staff.
Bids for contract
Two bidders applied to deliver training. Bidder 1 submitted a cost of 2 £35,355. Bidder 2 submitted cost of £32,500 – both in line with the specification requirements.
On assessment and evaluation, bidder 1 was the preferred bidder due to the added value of knowledge and experience of the training.
Bidder 1 had already worked with multiple other forces up and down the country along with being a preferred trainer for this subject with the College of Policing. Bidder 1 also received the highest overall score following an internal evaluation process.
The quotation was submitted to the suppliers with evaluation criteria of 60% quality and 40% price.
The Chief Executive is satisfied that this report does not ask the PCC to make a decision which would (or would be likely to) give rise to a contravention of the law.
As Monitoring Officer, I have encouraged the Force to keep under close review, the need for additional investment in direct refresher training (to supplement in-house provision delivered following ‘train the trainer’ services) bearing in mind the operational significance of this area of service provision and the concerns expressed by HMICFRS in this regard following the 2019 PEEL inspection.
The PCC to note the procurement processes used to appoint the supplier and approve the procurement methods investigated and recommendations put forward by the Evaluation Team to award the contract to SafeLives.