Northamptonshire Police to double domestic abuse team
New Chief Constable Ivan Balhatchet has admitted the force “got it wrong”.
Northamptonshire Police has doubled the size of its domestic abuse team, as new Chief Constable Ivan Balhatchet has admitted the force “got it wrong”.
A police spokesperson said the team has been expanded to 45 members, including proactive officers, two inspectors, six sergeants and around 30 Detective Constables working across the North and the West of the county.
The increase was agreed in March 2024 to provide a better level of service and improve outcomes for victims who are at the highest risk of domestic abuse. A spokesperson confirmed the expansion is fully up to speed now.
The police chief told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) : “We got this wrong, we didn’t have enough specialist people in our domestic abuse unit. That means many high-risk domestic abuse investigations were going to officers, which quite frankly wasn’t fair.
“They didn’t have the training and they didn’t have the time, therefore victims suffer, safeguarding suffered and you can see that from some of the results we had there.”
In Northants Police’s latest HMIC (His Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary) assessment, the force’s investigation of crime was rated as ‘requires improvement’. The report stated that Northamptonshire Police should make sure it allocates investigations to officers and teams that have the ‘capability and capacity’ to carry out thorough investigations.
During the police watchdog’s visit in September 2023, it found that some crimes involving vulnerable victims had been inappropriately allocated to response and neighbourhood policing officers, such as cases involving high-risk domestic abuse and cases relating to the possession of indecent images of children.
Mr Balhatchet added: “We’ve done lots of work on how we investigate crime, making sure our crime allocation policy is fit for purpose and the right crimes go to the right teams with the right skills. I can put my hands up and say we got it wrong and I think actually this extra resource will give a much better service to domestic abuse victim, making sure crimes of the highest risk go to the right trained units as well.”
The effectiveness of the force’s domestic abuse response is also now monitored through three key boards on vulnerability, domestic abuse and stalking.
Responding to emergency calls from the public was another area that was rated as ‘requires improvement’ in the latest policing inspection. The top cop said that work was being done to improve response rates to 999 calls and ‘heavily invest’ in control rooms.
The HMIC report found that in June 2023 Northamptonshire Police answered 78.5 per cent of its 999 calls within 10 seconds, which is below the 90 per cent national target. Mr Balhatchet said that the police were focusing on getting response times “back on track”.
He added that HMIC would be coming back to the force to carry out another independent inspection of Northants Police at the end of 2025.