Crime Reduction - Helping to Reduce Crime in Your Area

Awards

Tilley Awards 2006

The Tilley Awards are named after Professor Nick Tilley of Nottingham Trent University, who has carried out considerable work in the UK, often commissioned by the Home Office, to develop problem-oriented policing (POP). They are funded by the Home Office Crime Reduction and Community Safety Directorate and were set up in 1999 to encourage and recognise excellence in crime reduction using problem-oriented partnership principles. As such, the awards have very close links to problem-oriented policing approaches. Appropriately, the awards are presented at the National POP Conference

The guidance below relates to the Tilley Awards 2006. You can download this guidance as a Word document Word 70Kb. You can also download the electronic application form for the Tilley Awards 2006 Word 38Kb.

9th Annual Problem-Oriented Partnerships Conference: Building Safer Neighbourhoods Together

Booking is now open for this year’s problem-oriented partnerships conference. Details of the conference and an online booking form are available at

www.ukpopconference.co.uk

Contents

Introduction

This guidance has been written for people considering entering their project into the Tilley Awards 2006. It has been designed specifically to help you to:

  • decide whether your project is ready to be entered for the awards

  • put together the best possible application

  • know what to do with your application once completed

  • know what to expect once you have entered

You are strongly encouraged to read this guidance very carefully. Even if you have entered the awards before, please make sure that you have understood this guidance and that you follow the procedure closely. The Tilley Awards are becoming increasingly valued as a mark of quality and as such are attracting more and better entries than ever before.

Each year, the Home Office tries to improve the administration of the awards and to respond to new aspects of the work in the community. This year they have made some changes to streamline the administration of the awards and to strengthen the procedures for entry qualification. Be sure that you are clear about what these are before you send in your entry. If your application is not in the correct format and/or not received by the deadline, it will not be considered for the awards.

The Home Office aim to provide you with as much help as possible in submitting a correct application. Therefore, if you have any queries about your application or the proper procedure to follow, please contact Tricia Perkins by telephoning 020 7035 0262.

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What are the Tilley Awards?

POP approaches were first promoted by Herman Goldstein and advocate the application of scientific principles to the identification and solving of community-based problems. The focus is on analysing and understanding problems and developing tailored responses to reduce them. The processes have been widely endorsed as a pragmatic means of tackling problems and link into recent developments in policing including the National Intelligence Model, SARA and community policing. They have also been shown to be a key feature in delivering successful crime reduction outcomes. The Tilley Awards recognise excellence in work undertaken by practitioners working in partnership to apply these principles.

The Tilley Awards 2005 were won by:

  • Sussex Police, for "Operation Dodger"

  • Lancashire Constabulary, for "Mountains into Molehills"

  • Lancashire Constabulary, for "Return of the Happy Shopper"

Last year, 58 applications were received for the awards from a number of different police force areas, and, although some areas offered more than one application, others submitted no entries at all. The judges would greatly welcome applications from these forces this year. Last year's judges were very impressed by the overall standard of entries and this trend is likely to continue. As a consequence, the standard set by the winning projects is exceptionally high. Please bear this in mind when making your entry.

This year there will be one main prize and two runner-up prizes to projects that, in the judges' opinion, demonstrate excellence in POP. For this year only, there will be an additional prize for partnership working on criminal damage.

What are the prizes?

The winner of the main Tilley Award will be given financial assistance to enable members of their team to attend and present their project to the International Problem Oriented Policing Conference in the United States of America in autumn 2006. Members of the winning team will also be asked to sit on the judging panel for the Tilley Awards 2007.

The winners of the good practice in criminal damage award will be given money to assist with the evaluation of their project.

All four winners (three for the main Tilley Awards and one for the criminal damage project) will be invited to present their work at the annual UK Problem Oriented Policing Conference in September in Birmingham.

All winners will also be presented with their prizes at the conference and will be involved in publicising the event.

Who can enter?

The Tilley Awards are open to all UK police forces and their partner agencies. Non-UK police forces are excluded from entering. The entries can be made by either the police or by partners but where partner agencies make the application, this must be endorsed by the relevant police area before it can be accepted. It is assumed that the police will have played an active role in the project.

Entries can either be about reducing crime and disorder problems or about organisational aspects of partnership working. However, the focus must be on the effective delivery of a problem-oriented approach to crime reduction.

Please remember that the awards have historically received a high number of entries and there are only 4 prizes. We strongly recommend that you liaise with colleagues in your area before submitting your application and that you collectively select the strongest entries. Some police force areas have run internal competitions prior to entering these awards in order to select their area's strongest contenders. In forces with many potential projects, this is good practice.

The judging criteria are set out in this guidance, along with the weighting given to each category. Please use this information to assess your project. Only submit an application if you are confident that it meets all the criteria set out below. It is very important that you understand what you need to demonstrate for your project to have a reasonable chance of being short-listed. You may well decide after considering these points that it is too early to submit an application or that the potential entry is not strong enough to be short-listed.

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How to enter

Applications for the award this year must be submitted on the electronic application form that can be found below. It can also be requested by emailing patricia.perkins@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk. One hard copy should also be sent to Tricia Perkins, 5th Floor, Peel Building (NW Quarter), 2 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 4DF.

Download the electronic application form Word 38Kb.

Please note that all applications have to meet the following criteria in order to be accepted:

  • The application form must be completed in full. Additional information to the application form is not required and will be disregarded in the judging process.

  • All applications must be endorsed by a senior police officer in the police force covered by the application. It is the endorsing officer's responsibility to ensure that the material facts of the application are accurate and that applications meet the requirements of the awards.

  • Applications for the criminal damage award only must state this clearly in the designated box.

  • All applications should be made by email to Tricia Perkins (patricia.perkins@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk) with the heading 'Entry for Tilley Awards 2006'. The application form should be attached to the email, if possible in PDF format.

  • Applications received will be acknowledged by a return email. The Home Office is not responsible for any applications not received by the due date.

  • All entries must be received by 12 noon on 28th April 2006. Any entries not received by this date will not be eligible for the 2006 awards under any circumstances. It is the responsibility of the applicants to ensure that entries have been received by the deadline.

  • All information supplied on the application will be made available to other partners in crime reduction projects (including other police forces) and to the general public.

  • By making an entry, applicants agree to participate in any publicity associated with the event.

  • The judges' decision is final and all applicants will be deemed to abide by their decision.

Further information for the application form is given at the end of this guidance.

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The judging process

There are two stages to the judging process: short-listing and judging.

Short-listing

All entries are initially read and scored by a small team, mostly drawn from Home Office researchers. All entries are read by at least two people. The scores for all entries are collated and only those with the highest scores are passed to the judging panel.

Judging

Each judge reads and scores all the short-listed entries. The scores from each judge are then collated and the three highest scoring entries are identified as the winners. If a judge comes from the same police force as an entry then they do not score that entry: an average score is calculated using the scores from the other judges. Judges are asked to comment on the entries and this forms the basis of the feedback that is sent to the authors of entries.

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Judging criteria

The judges are asked to score the strengths and weaknesses of each entry using the following criteria. You should consider these questions for yourself in preparing your entry, as these are the criteria against which entries will be marked.

Objectives of the project

  • Clear, specific and realistic objectives

  • Clearly defined success criteria

  • A problem of significant concern to the community

  • Appropriate involvement of the police and other agencies in identifying the problem

Definition of the problem

  • Reliable information and information sources were used to analyse the problem

  • Analysis of information appropriate for the problem

  • Conclusions about the causes and underlying conditions that precipitated the problem flow logically from the data

  • The analysis demonstrates knowledge about the nature and extent of the problem

  • Gaps in information are identified and taken into account

  • All the agencies that have a stake in this problem have been identified, consulted and involved

Response to the problem

  • Clear relationship between the analysis and the design of the response

  • Clear reasons why a particular response was chosen over others

  • The evidence presented to support the intervention was effective

  • The project demonstrated effective use of partnership working and ownership of the response, within and outside the force

  • The project was planned, implemented and costed with adequate resources allocated

  • Difficulties were identified and well managed

  • Evidence of an effective ongoing review mechanism and changes were made in response to this process

  • Shows consideration of the sustainability and transferability of the response

  • Response is creative or innovative or tests new areas of work

Evaluation of the intervention

  • Clear use of evaluation data to both inform and improve the response

  • Evidence collated of whether the response achieved what was intended

  • Method of evaluation chosen appropriate for the evaluation question and provides some evidence of impact

  • Evaluating the project showed high ownership across partners

  • Evaluation extended the knowledge and understanding of the problem, the underlying causes and/or the potential solution

Written presentation

The entry is well presented, easy to read, make appropriate use of charts and images, is easy to understand, parts flow logically, the right information has been selected, the appendices have been used appropriately.

Coherence of project

That each stage of the project grew out of the preceding stages. For example, the response does actually address the problem highlighted by the analysis; the evaluation does measure what is important; there is some awareness of the cost-effectiveness of the project.

The scoring system

The judges can score from 'no credit' (0) through to 'superior' (7) for each of the above categories based solely on the information provided in the application. Not all the criteria will carry equal weighting as some are considered more important than others. The scores for 'definition of the problem' and 'evaluation of the intervention' are weighted more heavily than the others to reflect their importance. Please note that projects failing to achieve a high score in these categories will not be able to win.

The summaries of all the projects (short-listed/submitted) for the award will be placed on a database and details of the projects will be available to others. Please note that by submitting a project for the awards you agree that any information included in your entry can be made available to others.

Feedback from the judging process

A key aim of the Tilley Awards is to improve problem-orientated practice in the field. To this end, the Home Office will make the individual scores available to the applicants after the awards have been presented. This feedback will consist of:

  • weighted scores for each category;

  • comments made by judges; and

  • median scores for all applications made in 2006.

Applicants are strong encouraged to use this feedback to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of their work.

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Key dates

Deadline for applications:

28th April 2006

Short-listed applicants notified:

End of May 2006

Winners notified:

End of June 2006

POP Conference:

5th – 7th September 2006

Feedback sent out:

End of October 2006

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Information for application form

It is imperative that the application form is completed in full giving:

1. Project details to include:

  • Title of project

  • Name of force/agency/CDRP

  • Name of one contact person with position/rank (this should be one of the authors) and their:

    • email address;

    • postal address;

    • telephone number;

    • fax number.

  • Name of endorsing senior representative(s) with position and rank and contact details

2. Summary of the application (in total less than 400 words) highlighting:

  • Outline of the problem that was addressed by the project

  • Description of the initiative designed to address the problem

  • The main intervention principles and what they were designed to achieve

  • The main outcomes of the project, particularly in relation to the problem

  • What evidence was used in designing the programme and how the project was evaluated

3. A description of the project in no more than 4000 words

4. A letter from the nominated senior representative(s) endorsing the entry

Entry format

All entries must be submitted on the application form.

All entries must be prepared in the following format:

  • Microsoft word version 97

  • Size 10 Arial font

  • File size not to exceed 1MB (excluding endorsing letter). Meeting this limit may entail removing illustrations as these make particularly high use of memory.

Hints for entries

The Tilley Awards seek to demonstrate excellence in problem-solving policing. Excellence could be demonstrated in different ways, as described below.

  • Projects entered could describe work to reduce specific crime and disorder problems and can cover the full range of problems encountered by the police and their partners. However, the judges will be looking to see how far the project demonstrates a wider adoption of problem-solving, and that this is used on a systematic basis to address police work day to day, rather than one-off problems.

  • Projects using problem-oriented principles to deal with any organisational issue (for example, staff sickness, shift systems). You need to show the end result as improved delivery of problem-solving in relation to crime and disorder problems and how this particular project helped to bring that about. Examples might include:

    • change management programmes to introduce problem-solving

    • training

    • changes to the performance management process to ensure POP is adopted properly

  • Similarly, projects might use problem-oriented principles to reassure the public or provide a better service to victims.

  • Projects develop and support effective partnerships.

  • Points to bear in mind should include the following:

    • Entries should demonstrate that the work forms part of the local crime and disorder strategy.

    • Although the police should lead in preparing the entry, they may not necessarily have been the lead agency in the project. It is important to show that the project was a joint enterprise and the contributions of each agency should be made clear.

Common pitfalls

Significant work can be involved in preparing an entry. There are a number of lessons from previous years that you might like to bear in mind in considering whether to enter and in preparing your entry.

Entering projects too early
The ultimate measure of a project's effectiveness is if it has reduced crime and disorder or can be shown to have been effective in helping to ensure the delivery of POP. If the project is entered at too early a stage then it is usually not possible to demonstrate an effective outcome and such entries lose marks in the evaluation and coherence categories. It is simply not possible to win if these scores are low.

Poor presentation of the entry
There are many aspects to presenting an entry including writing style, structure, clarity of diagrams and charts, grammar and spelling. The content of a well-written report is more likely to make an impact because it will show to best effect what is important about the project and also that the author knows how to structure their thinking in a logical way. These are core skills in problem-oriented crime reduction. Invite someone not associated with the project to proof-read an early draft of your entry and provide feedback on it – can they understand the project? You may also want someone to proof read it at a later stage.

Unhelpful summaries
Summaries help the judges to gain a quick overview of the project before they read the main report. It is helpful to read the full report with a sense of context. The summary pack, which is widely circulated, also contains copies of all summaries without the main report. The summary should, therefore, be treated as an important, stand-alone document that provides a succinct description of the project. Although sections of the main report are likely to form the basis of the summary, these do need to be summarised rather than simply used at full length. Ensure the summary is no longer than 400 words and that it contains no diagrams or charts. It should fit onto one side of A4.

Publicity associated with the awards

The awards receive a high amount of interest and publicity not only in this country but in others as well. One of the aims of the awards is to share good practice and to publicise not only the three highest scoring projects but also those short-listed, initially through the POP Conference which takes place in September. Police forces and associated partners who enter a project should ensure that there are no problems associated with making their entry publicly available both at the conference and to a much wider audience. The endorsing senior officer along with the officer(s) entering the project should take responsibility for ensuring that there are no problems associated with any publicity involved in entering a project to the Tilley Awards. By submitting a project, the applicants are agreeing that any aspect of their entry can be disseminated and made available more widely.

Last update: 15 March 2006

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