Chasing paper, not villains

Police are being forced to waste their time in form-filling and bureaucracy, a damning official report has warned. The report, by a former chief constable of the Northern Ireland police service, also accuses officers of pursuing easy arrests and trivial offences to meet government targets.

Sir Ronnie Flanagan, now chief inspector of constabulary, spent four months on the beat with rank-and-file officers. He now wants drastic changes to policing.

He was astonished to find that, just to report a road accident, officers at one force must fill in a 44-page booklet. Making an arrest for shoplifting can tie a constable up in paperwork for five hours. And Flanagan found that officers concentrated on easy cases – “an example would be a low-level playground assault” – to meet their targets.

For one former detective constable, writing in The Sun, it was all too familiar. “As a uniformed officer I spent 60%-70% of my time on paperwork,” said Johnno Hills.

“When I was at Hove, East Sussex, the form I had to fill out if someone was reported missing was a 28-page booklet. That would waste hours before we could even start looking for the person . . . I would have to repeat the same information up to 40 times.”

Gordon Brown welcomed Flanagan’s review of policing and immediately promised to introduce handheld computers that would reduce time on form-filling. “We believe we can cut the amount of paperwork on any one shift for a police officer by about 1½ hours,” he said.

Jan Berry, chairman of the Police Federation, was not optimistic: “In 2002 a predecessor of Sir Ronnie chaired a bureaucracy taskforce that made many similar recommendations. Regrettably, without the cash and political will needed, many of these recommendations will fail to become a reality.”

The patient is only a little better

The money poured into the NHS over the past five years has failed to provide sufficient improvement, a review concluded last week.

Sir Derek Wanless gave his verdict five years after producing a report on the NHS for the Treasury. That paved the way for an extra £43.2 billion to be spent on the service. He said patient care had improved with waiting times down and plans to recruit 7,500 more consultants, 2,000 more GPs and 20,000 more nurses exceeding their targets. But he warned: “We are not on course to deliver the sustainable and world-class healthcare service, and ultimately the healthier nation, that we all desire.”

Wanless was particularly critical of the pay rises to staff, including consultants and GPs, which accounted for £18.9 billion of the extra money. “There is very little robust evidence so far to demonstrate significant benefits arising from the new pay deals,” he said.

Fish oil creates sea change in learning

Children could dramatically improve their performance at school with a daily dose of fish oil. Youngsters taking it as part of a trial shone in the year 6 national tests, their football team won the cup and behaviour improved.

Staff at Toft Hill primary school in Bishop Auckland, Co Durham, have issued the tablets every day since January 2006. In a maths test in July, 78% of pupils were expected to reach the national average: the result was 92%. For English, 68% were expected to reach it – 92% did.

“It’s not all down to fish oil: we have some very good teachers,” says Richard Whitfield, the head teacher. “But there is no doubt it was a significant factor.”

Nailed by your postcode

Once you could place somebody by their clothes or accent. Now all you need is their postcode. A new study seems to prove claims that marketing firms can produce detailed profiles using data from loyalty or credit cards and house prices. Roger Burrows, a sociologist at York University, says such profiles are “frighteningly accurate”. He checked profiles from a financial company against a street in Howden, East Yorkshire. “You could almost feel the crack in the street where the postcode changed,” he said.

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