Police Now has recently been put back in the spotlight as its Leadership Development programme beat over 70 entries to win the Best Learning and Development Initiative in the Public & Third Sector at the CIPD People Management Awards.

Tackling long-term problems that matter to the local community

The two-year Police Now programme puts top graduates in the country’s most challenged communities where they can have the greatest impact working as police officers. Each police officer on the programme has a mission to cut crime and tackle long-term problems that matter to their local community, such as addressing anti-social behaviour, safeguarding vulnerable individuals or dealing with knife crime.

Police Now was created by a small team of frontline police officers and detectives who developed the programme while they were also working in challenging operational policing roles across London. The team who created Police Now have a range of backgrounds, including in emergency response policing, neighbourhood policing, counter-terrorism, sexual offences investigation and cyber-crime investigation.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is a professional association for human resource management professionals. Their prestigious annual awards recognise and celebrate outstanding achievements in people management and learning and development.

The judges commented:

“An excellent and inspiring programme totally aligned to the purpose and needs of today’s modern police force. The initiative has had a significant impact on perceptions, recruitment and career progression and is attracting people into policing who may not typically consider this is as a career option. This has had a remarkable impact on diversity.”

This win is in addition to 11 award wins that Police Now has received this summer for its graduate recruitment campaign.

David Spencer, Co-founder and Chief Executive of Police Now and until recently a Detective Chief Inspector in the Metropolitan Police Service, said:

“This CIPD award reflects the great work by the small team of frontline PCs, Sergeants and Inspectors who put themselves out to create Police Now, often volunteering to do this while also working in challenging operational jobs. This sort of recognition would never have happened without the hard work of the PCs on the Police Now programme and the invaluable contribution made by their colleagues working on the frontline and in HR teams in our partner forces.”

In its first year Police Now was piloted by the Metropolitan Police Service. In 2016 the programme expanded to seven forces, and has this year expanded to nearly half of all police forces across the country.