Public Service Agreements (Hansard, 23 April 2002)

§ Angela Eagle

The Home Office's public service agreement (PSA) targets are listed. These were set in the 2000 Spending Review. There have been no changes since the publication of the 2001 Home Office Departmental Report except those resulting from the Machinery of Government changes shown.

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PSA Target

1. Reduce the key recorded crime categories of:
Vehicle crime by 30 per cent. by 2004;
Domestic burglary by 25 per cent. with no local authority area having a rate more than three times the national average, by 2005; and
Robbery in our principal cities by 14 per cent. by 2005.

2. Ensure by 2004 that the levels of fear of crime in the key categories of violent crime, burglary and car crime, reported in the British Crime Survey (BCS), are lower than the levels reported in the 2001 BCS.
3. Reduce by 2004 the economic cost of crime, as measured by an indicator to be developed by March 2001.
4. Disrupt 10 per cent. more organised criminal enterprises by 2004.
5. Improve the level of public confidence in the Criminal Justice System (CJS) by 2004, including improving that of ethnic minority communities.
6. Increase the number and proportion of recorded crimes for which an offender is brought to justice.
7. Improve by 5 percentage points the satisfaction of victims and witnesses with their treatment by the CJS by 2002 and thereafter at least maintain that level of performance.
8. Reduce by 2004, the time from arrest to sentence of other outcome by:

Reducing the time from charge to disposal for all defendants, with a target to be specified by 31 March 2001;
Dealing with 80 per cent. of youth court cases within their time targets; and halving from 142 to 71 days by 2002 the time taken from arrest to sentence for persistent young offenders and maintaining that level thereafter.

9. Reduce the rate of reconviction:
of all offenders punished by imprisonment or community supervision by 5 per cent. in 2004 compared with the predicted rate; and
of all young offenders by 5 per cent. in 2004 compared with the predicted rate.
10. Maintain the current low rates of prisoner escapes including no Category A escapes.
11. Reduce the proportion of people under the age of 25 reporting the use of Class A drugs by 25 per cent. by 2005 (and by 50 per cent. by 2008).
12. Reduce the levels of repeat offending among drug-misusing offenders by 25 per cent. by 2005 (and by 50 per cent. by 2008).
13. Ensure that by 2004, 75 per cent. of substantive asylum applications are decided within two months.
14. Enforce the immigration laws more effectively by removing a greater proportion of failed asylum seekers.
15. Make substantial progress by 2004 towards one million more people being actively involved in their communities.
16. Promote race equality, particularly in the provision of public services such as education, health, law and order, housing and local government, and measure progress by the annual publication of Race Equality in Public Services, a set of race equality performance indicators across the public sector; and achieve representative work forces in the Home Office and its police, probation and prison services.
17. Ensure annual efficiency gains by police forces are worth in total at least 2 per cent. of overall police spending in that year.
18. Reduce the incidence of accidental fire-related deaths in the home by 20 per cent. averaged over the five-year period to March 2004 compared with the average recorded in the five-year period of March 1999.¹

¹ Following Machinery of Government changes, this target has been transferred from the Home Office to the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions.