Independent Scrutiny and Oversight Board

Welcome Message from Deputy Mayor of Policing, Fire and Crime, Jo Coles:

Meeting Overviews

Meeting Date: 18 June 2025

Cultural Awareness; Workplace Development Programme as the focus of the evening.  

Session objective: To identify actionable recommendations for NYP PRAP. Second half of the meeting to be an open table discussion with ISOB members.  

Attendees:

• Becky Leung – Interim Chair of Board
• Sheila Forder – Inclusivity and Public Confidence Manager within the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority – Policing, Fire and Crime Directorate
• Hannah Nash –  Inclusivity and Public Confidence Officer within the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority – Policing, Fire and Crime Directorate
• Chief Constable Tim Forber – North Yorkshire Police
• CI Craig Malia – North Yorkshire Police
• Sgt Lailah Nijaila – North Yorkshire Police
• Five Public Panel Members also attended this meeting.

Meeting Notes: 

• Welcome from Chair Becky Leung. 

Agenda item 1 – Introduction to Chief Constable Forber. 

• Introduction to Tim Forber. About his first year leading the force and where he wants to take it in the medium term going forwards. 
• Chief Constable Forber stated he is determined to deliver effective community policing with communities – not to them. He believes this happens by understanding the cultural dimensions and what makes them tick. The recent Cultural Awareness Workplace Development Programme is the first step in becoming an outstanding police service to all organisations – but this will not be achieved with training alone.  
• The Chief said he is proud of the crime rate falling in North Yorkshire. There is comparatively high levels of confidence, and anti-social behaviour is falling. He believes an important part of all of this is independent scrutiny, such as this ISOB. 
• Chief Constable Forber concluded the opening by explaining he wants and welcomes constructive challenge. He then opened the room for questions.  

Questions by members of the ISOB to Chief Constable Forber.  

Question: When it comes to diversity, we are looking at a lot more than Black people – can the Police Race Action Plan’s focus on ‘Black’ make other people feel left out? Are you thinking about this when talking about the work being done? 

Answer:  This (the Police Race Action Plan) came out of the George Floyd incident, and the national programme looks at Black communities. My view is that North Yorkshire Police Race Action Plan should be about all communities and how North Yorkshire Police Interact with them. North Yorkshire does not have huge pockets of diverse communities which means people are potentially more isolated – if there is less of you, you are more isolated. It is more important to get it right here, communities draw strength from community, but there is not the same huge concentration in North Yorkshire as there is elsewhere. Police therefore need to be more proactive about that.  

Question: What do you consider to be the three main challenges internally regarding race? 

Answer:  

1 – Equality, Diversity and Inclusion structure and governance. North Yorkshire Police did not have a clear EDI strategy or a clear command structure. The governance was chaotic – we have now fixed this with a clear strategy and structure.  

2 – Recruitment and positive action. This was once a tick box exercise. North Yorkshire Police were, on paper, the only force that represents the community. You do need to recruit and make it an attractive organisation so that anyone sees it as an attractive organisation to join – but the real challenge is what it’s like when you get here and how inclusive is it. The focus here (and elsewhere) was that if you use overt racism you’re out – which is true as anyone being overtly racist will lose their job. But, if you speak to colleagues in the force, particularly from diverse backgrounds, this is not the issue, it’s about covert language, feeling like people don’t belong, microaggressions. Having a spreadsheet gives you a sense of who you have, but the power of diversity is the challenge. Groupthink would not be a good organisation; North Yorkshire Police need different perspectives to challenge and do things differently. People must have the confidence to speak up and feel like their opinions are valid.  

3 – Building leadership that lasts. A key piece of work will be a values and behaviours strategy to underpin the leadership academy and training, the key is not courses and a strategy, the key is about the highest quality frontline leadership. Leadership academy and training will be rolled across all tiers of officers and staff. Every single selection process will test on the values and behaviours expected within the organisation. Values and behavioural statements need to have clear positive and negative behaviour statements, that underpin the broader policy.  

• Chief Constable Forber closed this section of the meeting by thanking all members for their time, and explaining how appreciated it is that they have given up their time to be here.  

Agenda Item 2: Police Race Action Plan team presentation about the Cultural Awareness Programme. 

• (Programme has already been attended by all ISOB members in the room).  
• Slides to be shared with the group.  

Questions following the presentation:  

Question: Some officers are not sure how to react to different cultures, some people will still be problematic after training. Do you think they need to go out with experienced officers to experience it? 

Answer: The training for concepts is provided, and application will be helped by the ‘influencers’ within the organisation who are the people who can go with and help those who need additional assistance and/or learning. Leadership also crucial, when they see officers day in, day out, they will need to pick people up on areas for development. A whole system approach is needed as people might not pick things up or know how to address them now. This is just the fundamental basics and how it is implemented afterwards will come with the further work.  

Question: The narrative of today seems to be we are working with these officers to make culture changes. Are we recognising how difficult culture change is? Recent interactions with people who are born and raised in North Yorkshire showed that people using ‘coloured’ as a normal way to refer to an individual in a conversation. Recruiting in North Yorkshire is drawing people from a population who may not be open to change.  

Answer: North Yorkshire Police have just appointed someone who is doing a cultural audit to baseline where the organisation is in terms of the culture. We are aware that North Yorkshire Police have lots of little cultural issues rather than a big one, we need to identify them and find out where they come from. The focus on performance over culture needs to change, Sharon Bartlett has created a new framework, and the cultural audit piece will be important in seeing how this training has landed, and where the next training needs to be based. Cultural training will be a slow process, while adapting to a high staff turnover (due to the new modern nature of policing jobs).  

• • Action: Have S. Bartlett invited to next meeting to discuss the work her team are undertaking.  

Question 2: This influencer programme sounds good, and the workplace development programme. Do you think within the force you have a genuine education problem outside of police, i.e. Exposure and emotional intelligence? 

Answer: In general terms yes, an emotional intelligence problem, down to training that is yes, or no. A lot of policing is reading body language so frontline police officers (that are the minority) have a specified situational emotional intelligence. We have seen and monitored that this is something that lacks. Not grasping that situations being explained are the true lived experience of someone – people get defensive and defend their mates, no matter what anyone says their experience is. We need more people to be open to understanding it is not an attack on policing but is an education. This sweet spot was achieved today in the training, so it looks positive going forwards.  

Question 3: There is a national educational issue, so might this be worth considering in recruitment processes? 

Answer 3: The police are the community, and the community are the police. Policing isn’t perfect or we wouldn’t be sat here now or have matters that reach reflective practice. Reflection is not something people are used to doing, as they have three years of training being told what to do. 

Agenda Item 3: Break  

• Action: Request food for future meetings. Timing of meeting and travel times means people have been unable to eat. 

Agenda Item 4: Table Discussion on Powerpoint and thoughts on training viewed 

• Police Race Action Plan team left the room to ensure discussion could be unbiased, open and honest.  
• Section 2: Table discussion.  
• BL: each identify two areas for constructive feedback.  

ACTION: send material out 2-3 days in advance before next meeting i.e. PowerPoints or other feedback.  

• • Be aware of culture, language and accent and how they look at officers (i.e. different cultures look at officers in different ways). When they know about this it will be easier to deal with jobs and different communities.  
  • Remember there are all sorts of cultures everywhere.  
  • Lack of problem-based discussion within the training. Most of the officers were asked to commit one thing they will do. A lot was about self-understanding and was on the passive side. Using more problem-based learning might help – might increase investment. – add to that, the concern is the roll out plan in a long term, how do you maintain it? How do you encourage a person to learn more? 
  • To add to the above – the myth busting exercise was useful in the practical side, but could there be a scenario based learning to make it more realistic to how to apply it in reality when interacting with racially minoritised members of the community.  
  • Last part of the training on allyship, with policing now its always a plan on a page, might need to revisit what sort of follow up has been done, they go into a day of training but what consolidates the learning is continuity and reflective practice.
  • ACTION: follow up in the next meeting with the PRAP team about what they will do with creating the learning that will be sustainable  

• • Rethink in terms of baseline education and emotional intelligence. 
  • How are officers encouraged to internalise the learning.  
  • Feel they need to be treated like humans, the educators just fired information at them but start with something to ease them in like a pre session homework or something to think about.  

• • ACTION: all materials and updates to be sent out prior to meetings. Send out pre and post learning materials.  

• • Q: Programme very flat in nature, did not consider multidimensional nature. Different ways to consider race from public, police, assumptions, introduced to concept and lacked multidimensional nature. This opinion was seconded, it was a lot of information – was hoping for more time for the learners to interact.  

• • ACTION: opportunity for the group to provide more detailed feedback. Send out pre and post learning materials and people can provide feedback to be compiled in a large document. Response from the PRAP team to be provided in the next meeting. 
•  Chair asked each ISOB member to identify two areas for constructive feedback. 
• Policing, Fire, and Crime team member, H. Nash shared the feedback from the Youth Commission.  
• Each ISOB member shared their initial feedback, but given new information had been provided from the Police Race Action Plan team, it was agreed they would be provided with additional materials and given another opportunity to provide feedback.  
• Feedback will be collected post-meeting, and a response from the Police Race Action Plan team will be provided at the next meeting. 

Next Meeting: 9 September 2025

Previous Meetings

25 March 2025

The first meeting of the new Independent Scrutiny and Oversight Board (ISOB) took place at Police and Fire Headquarters, in Northallerton, on Tuesday the 25th of March from 18:00-21:00.

The ISOB is administered by the Police Fire and Crime Team within the Combined Authority but chaired by an independent member of the ISOB until elections are held at a future meeting.

Attendees:

• Becky Leung – Interim Chair of Board
• Sheila Forder – Inclusivity and Public Confidence Manager within the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority – Policing, Fire and Crime Directorate
• Hannah Nash –  Inclusivity and Public Confidence Officer within the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority – Policing, Fire and Crime Directorate
• DCC Scott Bissett – North Yorkshire Police
• CI Craig Malia – North Yorkshire Police
• Sgt Lailah Nijaila – North Yorkshire Police
• Sgt Lejli Scrowston – North Yorkshire Police
• Nine Public Panel Members also attended this meeting.

Meeting Notes:

The meeting started with the opening address from Deputy Mayor Jo Coles in which she welcomed our volunteers and thanked them for their commitment to improving policing for the people of York and North Yorkshire.

The full video can be viewed on the Combined Authority website, under Police, Fire and Crime.

DCC Scott Bisset followed to echo the Deputy Mayor’s words, and explained why public scrutiny is crucial in this space, and assured the board that tough scrutiny is both welcomed and encouraged.

Introductions were led by Chair Becky Leung, and origins and backgrounds to everyone’s names were explained.

The ISOB then took a short break for food and prayer time, for those participating in Ramadan.

Once introductions were concluded, Sheila Forder, Inclusivity & Public Confidence Manager in the Combined Authority ran through administration and expected conduct for ISOB members. This included a presentation and brief video.

The Chair then opened the room up for discussion on the date of the next meeting. Once a time, day and week had been decided between all of the ISOB members in attendance, the next meeting was set for the Wednesday 18th June, at 17:30.

CI Malia then presented an overview of the work that North Yorkshire Police are currently doing on the national Police Race Action Plan (PRAP), and what the North Yorkshire Police Race Action Plan looks like specifically.

CI Malia explained the set up in North Yorkshire was a dedicated PRAP team and ran through the four workstreams that the team are currently working on.

All ISOB members were provided with copies of both the National PRAP and the North Yorkshire PRAP. The floor was then opened up for questions.