Reports
Actions for Police Rostering
Police Rostering
Overall, the NSW Police Force (the Force) is not meeting its target for responding to urgent calls for assistance. Today, one in four complaints is about customer service. Victims of crime report issues including difficulties in contacting an officer and frustration at having to wait for an officer to return to duty to find out about their case. The timeliness of investigations is also at risk when follow-up is delayed. Seventy per cent of comm
Actions for Dealing with household burglaries
Dealing with household burglaries
The NSW Police Force has done well to maintain a downward trend in household burglaries in NSW since 2001. Police recognise the impact this crime has on the community’s perception of security and safety. Success has come from a continued focus on prevention and enforcement. However, there are other factors which have influenced this result. These include a rise in the rate and length of imprisonment, the heroin drought in 2001, increases in the number of
Actions for Readiness to respond: Follow-up audit
Readiness to respond: Follow-up audit
The Ambulance Service of New South Wales has substantially implemented the 28 recommendations of the 2001 audit report that it accepted. It has also introduced significant new initiatives to improve performance that were not part of the 2001 recommendations. It has made substantial changes to its organisation and operations to implement these changes. Many of the changes are still proceeding. The Service has addressed a key finding of the 2001 audit
Actions for Responding to homelessness
Responding to homelessness
Many projects, both Partnership Against Homelessness and by individual agencies, have shown good results or led to improvements. One example is helping mental health patients maintain stable housing. Another is providing street outreach services to homeless people in inner Sydney. Despite these efforts, we were unable to determine how well the government is responding to homelessness statewide. This is because there are no statewide performance measures
Actions for Addressing the needs of young offenders
Addressing the needs of young offenders
The Department of Juvenile Justice and the NSW Police Force generally work together and with other agencies to identify and address the needs of young offenders. We found that this is done particularly well for young offenders who end up in detention and under community supervision. Both the Department of Juvenile Justice and the NSW Police Force have put some practices in place to identify and address the needs of young offenders diverted from the Child
Actions for The coordination of bushfire fighting activities
The coordination of bushfire fighting activities
The NSW model of rural fire fighting is complex, and requires an extensive amount of coordination and cooperation to function properly. This has inherent risks. In general, the model has been made to work quite well and much improvement in rural fire fighting has been achieved over the past decade. The efforts of all concerned should be recognised and applauded especially since any change must be developed cooperatively between a number of agencies and g
Actions for Planning statewide services
Planning statewide services
The Audit Office is of the view that: there is no system wide plan for the location of emergency departments. This function is undertaken by each Area Health Service coordination between the Department and the NSW Ambulance Service could be improved in aspects such as the collocation of facilities and direct communications between ambulances and emergency departments there is no policy framework that recognises the increasing role and impa
Actions for Police response to fraud
Police response to fraud
This audit was initiated following concerns expressed by the Department of Agriculture about the Police’s handling of a suspected fraud that it had first reported in 1996. The Department’s main concern related to the long delays before a full Police investigation took place. Nevertheless, the current review highlighted a number of areas that, in the opinion of The Audit Office, require closer examination and resolution by the Police Service in implement
Actions for Police response to calls for assistance
Police response to calls for assistance
While central communications units are responsible for broadcasting calls from the public for assistance to police cars; these units have no authority over those police cars. And while local police commands are responsible for police deployment, they have no ready capability to communicate with their police cars. The report also found that Local police management have limited contemporaneous knowledge of what their response resources are doing, and