The CVF Framework 2024: what the police Competency and Values Framework means for promotion
Updated 8 September 2026
CVF stands for the Competency and Values Framework: the College of Policing's national standard for the behaviours UK police officers are assessed against, from recruitment through to promotion boards. The 2024 CVF defines what good leadership looks like at every rank. In the standard national process, every question on your promotion board maps to one or more of its nine areas. The Met marks against its own future focused model. Knowing them is not enough: you need to be able to demonstrate them with specific, ranked, impact-led evidence. For where the CVF fits in the full board process, see the complete guide to UK police promotion boards.
Once you know the framework, the CVF decoder shows what panels are actually listening for in each competency, and the worked police CVF example answers put a weak and a strong answer side by side for every competency and value. When you come to write, the STARR framework guide shows how to structure the evidence.
State6's plain-English guide to the College of Policing Competency and Values Framework (CVF 2024). The framework is the College's; the summaries and coaching here are written by State6. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by the College of Policing.
2024 CVF Update
The framework was updated in 2024. It retains six competencies across three levels, but replaced the four 2016 values with three: Courage, Respect and Empathy, and Public Service, derived from the ethical policing principles. Levels are cumulative, and Level 1 is the practitioner baseline for constables: Sergeant through to Chief Inspector are all assessed at Level 2, with Level 3 reserved for Superintendent and above. Values have no levels: everyone is expected to display them equally regardless of rank.
The six CVF competencies
We Are Emotionally Aware
Reading and managing emotions, yours and other people's, under pressure.
Panels use this competency to test whether you notice what is happening in the people around you and adjust what you do because of it. At Sergeant level that means owning the emotional environment of your team, from spotting the officer who is quietly struggling to holding your own composure when a job turns. From Inspector upwards the panel expects you to shape culture, building an environment where people speak up before problems become crises.
We Take Ownership
Taking personal responsibility for your decisions, actions and outcomes.
This is the competency where boards punish collective language hardest. The panel wants a decision that was clearly yours, the rationale behind it and the outcome you carried, including when it went wrong. At promotion level, ownership stretches beyond your own actions. A Sergeant owns the standards of a team, and an Inspector owns outcomes delivered by supervisors they were not standing next to.
We Collaborate
Building working relationships beyond your own team to get results.
Collaboration is not the same as teamwork. Boards score whether you built relationships beyond your own team to get a result, whether that was another department or a partner outside policing altogether. Strong answers show why each partner had their own reason to engage and what the joint work delivered that working alone could not. At Inspector and above, panels listen for influence without authority.
We Support and Inspire
Turning the vision into daily delivery and helping your people perform.
This competency is about how you get performance from other people. Panels distinguish between running a competent management process and genuinely understanding what an individual needed in order to improve. At Sergeant level it is often the deciding competency, because it tests the shift from doing the work yourself to developing the people who do it.
We Analyse Critically
Weighing the evidence to make sound decisions and find root causes.
Boards use this competency to test judgement rather than intelligence. Strong answers show you weighing imperfect evidence and finding the root cause instead of settling for the convenient explanation. From Inspector upwards, panels expect organisational evidence in the answer, not just operational instinct.
We Are Innovative and Open-Minded
Staying curious and open to better ways of working.
Often the competency candidates answer least well at a board. Panels are not looking for a grand invention. They want curiosity, a willingness to try a better way of working and honesty about what the evidence showed when you did. A pilot that partly failed and was evaluated honestly can score higher than a tidy success story.
The three CVF values, the same at every rank
Courage
Making difficult calls and challenging what's wrong.
Boards listen for the difficult call made under pressure and for the moment you challenged something that was wrong, especially when the challenge carried a personal cost. Physical bravery is rarely the point at a promotion board. Professional courage is.
Respect and Empathy
Genuinely listening, and staying alert to the pressures others face.
Panels test whether you genuinely listened and stayed alert to the pressures on someone else, whether a colleague or a member of the public. Weak answers describe a polite process. Strong answers show your understanding of the other person changing what you actually did.
Public Service
Acting in the public interest, providing a service the public can trust.
The value that anchors the other two. Boards want evidence that you acted in the public interest even when it conflicted with an internal target or an easier option. An answer that connects an operational decision to public trust lands at every rank.
Free Download
24 pages of corporate language. Translated into one page of operational reality.
The College of Policing CVF is what your panel scores you against. Most officers have never read it properly.
- ✓The exact trap for each of the 6 CVF competencies, the ones good officers fall into without realising
- ✓The 2024 values update, and what happens if your examples still reference the 2016 framework
- ✓A rank calibration check for every transition: constable → sergeant → inspector → chief inspector
The one-page matrix, plus the three values decoded. Free. No login required.
No spam. One email with your download link. Unsubscribe any time.
Inside the CVF Explorer
The State6 CVF Explorer goes beyond the list. For every competency and value, at every rank, you get:
- Rank-specific behavioural indicators: exactly what assessors look for at Sergeant, Inspector and Chief Inspector
- Common mistakes candidates make at each level and why they cost marks
- Language that lands: phrases that signal you already think at the next rank
- Evidence prompts to help you identify and prepare the right examples
The CVF Explorer is part of State6. Choose a plan to unlock it and start preparing against the framework your panel actually uses. To see the framework answered in practice, read worked CVF examples for every competency across sergeant, inspector and chief inspector. When you are ready to turn your own evidence into scored answers, that is what police promotion board coaching on State6 does, section by section.
Get started with State6 →Want to practise against the framework for free? The free question bank is organised by CVF area, with questions for sergeant, inspector and chief inspector, free to download.
Or start the free trial and build your first answer free, no card needed.
Source: College of Policing CVF 2024