Public protection - enhancing our culture of learning through independent scrutiny and inspection
The scrutiny, inspection, assurance and regulatory advisory group is aligned with the national public protection leadership group. It is chaired by Craig Naylor, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary in Scotland. It brings together independent scrutiny bodies in response to “Priority 2 - enhancing our culture of learning through independent scrutiny and inspection” of the leadership group’s work plan. The advisory group is independent and is not a subgroup of the leadership group and the relationship between the two groups is best described as a critical friendship.
The work of the advisory group is supported by the public protection scrutiny working group which brings together inspectors and representatives from scrutiny bodies, and other relevant agencies, to develop proposals to deliver effective and proportionate scrutiny of public protection and coordinate engagement with stakeholders.
What is within the scope of public protection?
Public protection has six stands as described in the Chief Officers Public Protection Induction Resource and the national public protection leadership group terms of reference. These are:
- child protection
- adult support and protection
- violence against women and girls
- alcohol and drugs
- multi-agency public protection arrangements (MAPPA)
- suicide prevention.
Principles
The working group has adopted a range of principles to make sure that scrutiny assurance of public protection will be:
- designed to support improvement
- mindful of minimising additional demands on partnerships - building on partnerships’ existing learning and improvement self-evaluation activities
- proportionate - based on risk and intelligence
- appreciative - focused on what works well
- collaborative - scrutiny bodies, working together with partnerships and people with lived experience
- innovative and make the best use of technology
- transparent and open.
Timescales
Phase 1 of the work has begun with a series of conversations over the summer to engage Chief Officers Groups (COGs) across the country. This reflects their key role in assuring public protection arrangements.
We are keen to get COGs’ views, advice and support to help us refine our thinking on:
- how scrutiny bodies can work with local partnerships and each other to improve assurance of public protection and outcomes for people of all ages.
- where COGs are confident that public protection is working well and why. This will include particular strands, such as child protection. It will also include crosscutting aspects such as communication and quality assurance/self-evaluation.
- where there are challenges and opportunities to improve. This will include where there have been successful improvements and where improvement remains more challenging.
Learning from this and engaging with wider stakeholders will inform the development of a future public protection methodology, which will commence in 2026.
More information
Further updates will be provided periodically on this webpage as the work progresses. For more information email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.