A REPORT into the effectiveness of policing in Surrey has exposed problems with how the force records it attendance at crimes.
A national inspection of all 43 forces in England and Wales by watchdog Her Majesty's Inspectorate of the Constabulary (HMIC), took place between January and April of this year.
The effectiveness of three areas of police activity were analysed: crime prevention, police response to incidents and crimes, and freeing-up police time.
In the HMIC's resulting report, Surrey Police is named as one of the forces that, because of the system it uses to record crime and attendance, is "unable to monitor accurately their attendance in response to crimes".
It also says evidence from a small sample suggests that "on occasions there had been insufficient investigative activity and/or it has not been properly documented or supervised".
The watchdog is concerned this means Surrey Police and other named forces cannot assess the quality of service provided to victims and cannot ascertain the demands placed upon it.
But a public letter from Zoë Billingham at HMIC to Lynne Owens, Chief Constable for Surrey Police, also identifies significant positives.
It praised daily staff management meetings and its "sophisticated understanding of demand and how its resources are distributed".
The letter also commended the force's Integrated Offender Management (IOM) scheme, which is in place to manage and monitor offenders likely to cause most harm to communities.
But further problems noted included an inability to provide the number of suspects who failed to answer their police bail to HMIC.
The report sets out a series of recommendations for the force, including ensuring it has "adequate systems and processes to enable the accurate recording and monitoring of the deployment and attendance of officers and staff in response to all crime and incidents reported to them" by March 1.
The report was conducted through the examination of force documents and interviews with experts, police officers and staff. Inspectors also conducted a public survey and consulted focus groups about public expectations of police attendance.
Surrey Police did not provide a comment before the Mirror went to press.
