Last month a report was published by His Majesty‘s Inspectorate of Constabularies & Fire Rescue Services (HMICFRS) outlining their findings and recommendations following their recent inspection of the combined firearms licensing unit for these three forces. It’s fair to say the report is a damming indictment of the unit’s poor performance. Indeed, HM Inspector of Constabulary Roy Wilsher was sufficiently concerned by the degree to which the department was failing to effectively manage firearms and explosives licensing that he classified the Inspectorate’s findings as an “accelerated cause of concern” in view of the potential risk posed to public safety.
If you are an RFD within the tri-force area, or you regularly have customers from there, you will no doubt be familiar with their general inefficiency. However, you may still be surprised by a few of the key findings from the HMICFRS report, which include;
• significant backlogs in processing firearms/shotgun license applications and renewals, in some cases up to 2 years
• as a result there was an excessive reliance on temporary permits (over 1,000 in place at the time of the inspection)
• no effective case management system for managing applications
• limited supervision of case files
• insufficient training in firearms licensing given to officers and staff in the unit and related departments
• the officers and staff in the unit were often unclear about their roles and responsibilities, leading to confusion and duplicated efforts
• signing off the grant or refusal of certificates without proper delegated authority
• no standard procedure for seizing and revoking licenses, creating inconsistencies
• the shotgun renewal policy is a desk based process with all checks carried out remotely and without home visits or speaking directly to the certificate holder, their family or referees
• poor communication - no phone number for the unit to allow the public to receive a prompt response, and almost 2,200 unanswered emails sent to the unit were identified during the inspection
These are major shortcomings, but I suspect many readers will have reason to believe that such problems are not confined to these three forces. In any event, even if your dealings with customers and RFD’s in that area is limited, it’s likely that the findings of HMICFRS will have a ripple effect on firearms licensing departments in other police forces, which may be running scared that they could come in for the same criticisms if they were likewise to be subject to an inspection.
HMICFRS issued recommendations that Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Police should immediately prioritise firearm licensing and renewals, requiring them to make the following improvements with immediate effect;
• ensure that all licensing certificates are signed off with proper delegated authority
• review and update its firearms licensing policy and standard operating procedures to create consistency across all three forces
• review and update its desk based shotgun license renewal process to effectively reduce the risk to the public
• put in place a governance structure with oversight from senior leaders to make sure the department functions effectively
• improve communications with the unit’s officers, staff and the public
In addition, the Inspectorate gave the three forces a period of three months to take further steps to:
• provide the licensing unit with enough sustainable resources to safely manage the workload
• ensure that all officers and staff have adequate skills, training, and experience to do their jobs effectively
The trade has long been aware that firearms licensing departments up and down the country are struggling with many of the same issues, and in large part due to under resourcing with suitably trained staff. It will be interesting to see if the HMICFRS report finally has an impact on whether Chief Constables allocate a bigger slice of the pie from their budget to their firearms licensing units to enable these recommendations to be implemented, and how quickly any tangible improvements in service are noticeable.
In the meantime, you can expect an increase in requests from certificate holders in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire to lodge their guns pending delayed renewals. Their licensing unit has clearly picked up on the message about the over reliance on temporary permits to handle their backlogs. Just last week I was contacted by a certificate holder from Hertfordshire who had submitted his renewal application some four months before his certificate was due to expire. He had therefore benefited from the automatic eight weeks extension, and when that ran out, he was given a six month temporary permit, which is now on the verge of expiring. Last week he was told by his firearms licensing officer that as a matter of policy they can only issue one temporary permit, and therefore he must now lodge his guns with a dealer, meaning storage charges, despite the long delay not being in any way attributable to him.
Hopefully, we will start to see an improvement in turnaround times before long. For now though, I’d encourage you to spread the word widely that anyone who is licensed by these three forces, whether as an individual, or particularly as a dealer, should be aiming to submit their renewal application at least 9 to 12 months before their current certificate is due to expire. The same applies to other force areas where there are similar levels of delay.