Ministry of Defence Police and Guarding Agency

During the year there has been a continuing effort to
highlight the Agency’s "zero tolerance" stance on
harassment and bullying, with the completion of a poster
campaign which ran for some nine months and featured four
different designs. Work was also completed on the
development of a new procedure for handling complaints of
harassment or bullying made against police officers. The
procedure is aligned with the arrangements which apply to
other MOD and Service staff whilst remaining consistent with
police misconduct arrangements.
The MDP is required to produce a race equality scheme
(RES) and a disability equality scheme, with an impending
requirement for a gender equality scheme. Annual reports of
progress on the RES have been published as part of an
overall report prepared by MOD and it has been decided that
the MDP requirement to prepare equality schemes should, in
future, be met as part of an overarching MOD Diversity and
Equality Scheme. This takes account of current and
forthcoming legislation covering race, religion, sexual
orientation, disability, age and gender. A key feature of the
work to prepare the MDP element of the MOD Scheme was
the assessment of over 50 existing policies unique to the
MDP using an equality impact assessment toolkit developed
in-house. This work has given us reassurance that our
policies are both non-discriminatory and, wherever possible,
that they contribute to the elimination of discrimination.
The Agency’s Women’s Staff Association (WSA) held its
second AGM and Development Day giving members the
opportunity to consider their personal and professional
development. The WSA aims to ensure that women’s needs
and interests are recognised by the Agency but opens
membership to male staff as well as women – a fact that is
acknowledged as good practice in a recent MOD report on
diversity. The benefits of support networks for underrepresented
groups in the Agency is well recognised and the
DEU is working with members of such groups to form
networks for other staff.
Performance on gender and race issues was again
measured through participation in the Opportunity Now and
Race for Opportunity benchmarking exercises. Both exercises
revealed further improvement in our performance and helped
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE POLICE AND GUARDING AGENCY ANNUAL REPORT
In step at a graduation day march past
identify areas for development, and these are now included
in our action plans.
MDP PERFORMANCE AND
DEVELOPMENT REVIEW
A new Performance and Development Review (PDR)
system for MDP officers was introduced in April 2005. The
two main reasons for developing a new system were the
need to take into account the new police Integrated
Competency Framework (ICF) and the need to address the
perceived weaknesses of the previous PDR system. The ICF
is already being used to assess potential recruits, and
promotion processes will also be changing during 2006, thus
aligning the MDP with Home Department police forces and
with MOD personnel processes.
Further work is now being undertaken on the ICF
“activities”, or functional competences, to make them fit for
purpose for use in the MDP, and this will further strengthen
the PDR process. The functional competences also link to
national occupational standards with the long-term potential
of allowing officers to collate evidence for a range of awards
and qualifications through work-based activities.
The new MDP PDR is similar to the one used by civilian
staff and MGS officers, bringing the added advantage of
having similar PDR systems in use across the whole Agency.
It has a strong emphasis on development and on
performance against objectives, which will be recorded
through narrative assessments rather than being graded. The
new process has also brought about a move away from
individual report-year timings, which are difficult to track
effectively, to standardised reporting dates for each rank. A
range of resources to support staff through this transition
has been developed including a series of guidance leaflets,
classroom-based training, e-learning and a network of PDR
support officers.
ABSENCE MANAGEMENT
To optimise the positive impact of the in-house
Occupational Health and Safety Service (OHSS) team, a
strategic plan setting out actions both to directly support
attendance management and to put in place good practice in
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