After last month’s article was published, I read the rest of December’s GTI and was struck by how many pieces directly or indirectly touched on firearms licensing. It seems to be fast moving with change being the only constant.
Some of the enquiries I have received since last month’s publication have prompted me to spend this article unpacking the recently released National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) Quarterly Performance Figures. I understand it is no-one’s idea of fun but bear with me. To challenge effectively and drive change we must first better understand the current picture. This means that our arguments can be based in evidence (exactly as we would expect from the police).
It’s firstly important to acknowledge that effectively communicating police performance in firearms licensing will always be a challenge. There are complexities and large amounts of information contained within the firearms licensing system. There will always be a balance to be struck between simple enough to understand and detailed enough to be useful.
That said, the current figures miss the target significantly and in this piece I’ll address some of the key issues and try to explain more clearly.
% Completed 4 months – Misleading at first glance
It’s usual to present key information at the start of a document but it’s important to ask… are they the right numbers?
It’s very natural to read numbers presented next to each other as being linked together. The column “Total Applications Received in last 12 months” and “% Completed Within 4 Months” sit alongside each other.
So, looking at Bedfordshire we see 1,824 submissions have been received and 42% completed within 4 months but what does that tell us? Maybe not what we first think…
The Guidance Notes attached to these figures make it clear that the “completed in 4 months” percentage is not a percentage of all the applications received but rather a percentage of those received and completed within 12 months.
To try and explain the risks with this method as clearly as possible I have created this fictitious example.
I receive 100 requests for certificates and put 60 into a drawer for 13 months. I do nothing with these.
The remaining 40 I work on and complete all of these within a 12-month window.
In terms of these 40 I process 38 within 4 months. The remaining 2 take slightly longer. Therefore, of those 40 applications I have processed 95% (38/40 = 95%) in 4 months.
But, in reality only 38% of all applications received have been completed (38/100) within 4 months. This gives a distorted view of how well police are performing in this area and does not represent what we might expect that percentage to mean.
Going back to Bedfordshire and applying this understanding we see now that only 12% of all the applications received have been completed within 4 months.
The most startling change is in Gwent. When applying this different test performance moves from an impressive 98% to a less impressive 61%.
If this difference is calculated across all 43 forces we see that performance against this measure is on average 21% less than initially presented.
The best-case scenario for these numbers is that they are easy to misconstrue, and the worst case is that they are deliberately opaque to conceal poor performance. We have been working closely with British Shooting Sports Council and providing evidence to enable them to challenge the presentation of these numbers at senior levels within the police.
To the police’s credit, they appear to have recognised the shortcomings in how these figures are presented, and future releases may better reflect the true picture. But whether the issue is misunderstanding or opacity, the sector cannot afford complacency. As reforms gather pace, we will continue to challenge, interpret, and provide evidence - ensuring that firearms licensing performance is measured in a way that is both honest and useful.
Don’t forget – you can join the conversation by emailing info@firearmslicensing.net and suggesting subjects for future articles.
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The “Headlines” at the start of the documents look like this:
% Completed 4 months – Misleading at first glance