Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to reduce the time taken by the Independent Police Complaints Commission to resolve complaints.

Home Office officials work closely with the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) to monitor how they are delivering their objectives. The IPCC provide regular performance information to the Home Office, including information on the timeliness of completed cases, which are scrutinised closely by my officials as part of the business and corporate planning process. The Home office is working with the IPCC to develop appropriate performance measures for 2016-17, including more streamlined public access to IPCC timeliness information.

On 7 March, the Home Secretary announced plans to reform the IPCC’s Governance, to make it more effective and more responsive to the public. These plans were published on the gov.uk website: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/reforming-the-independent-police-complaints-commission-structure-and-governance We continue to provide additional funding to support the IPCC to expand to deliver an increased volume of timely, high quality investigations. I will ask the IPCC to write to the Honourable Member in response to the request for average times to complete the complaints process, and will ask for this response to be made available in the House Library.