The Independent Police Conduct Authority is meant to investigate complaints against police and uncover illegal behaviour. But it is collapsing under the weight of complaints, with 50% staff turnover:
Police’s independent watchdog is facing “material risk” in its ability to deliver its core functions amid a 64 per cent rise in complaints over three years, meaning a new plan to promote its services to vulnerable communities remains on hold.The most obvious reason for this is underfunding. While the IPCA has received a small budget increase over the last few years (from $4.1 million in 2017/18 to $5.7 million in 2021), that's clearly nowhere near the increase in workload, or enough to retain staff. And the result is that they're in the same position the Ombudsman was in a few years ago: constantly trying to do more with less, and failing as a result. And pretty obviously, this has an effect on public confidence in both the IPCA and the police. If the government wants to stop that erosion of confidence, it needs to increase the IPCA's funding so it can actually do its job properly, rather than just starving it. And if its wondering how to fund that, actually sacking police officers found by the IPCA to have broken the law would free up some money...The Independent Police Conduct Authority expects the number of complaints will continue to increase, after recording 4257 complaints for the 2020/2021 year, up from 2592 in 2017/2018.
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In a meeting with the Ministry of Justice last October, the authority reported the increasing demand was causing capacity restraints and impacting its ability to deliver its core functions in a timely manner.
