Greater Manchester Promotion Board Preparation
If you’re preparing for a Sergeant, Inspector or Chief Inspector board at Greater Manchester, your panel already knows your force’s inspection picture. Here’s what that means for you, and how State6 builds it into your preparation.
PEEL report
1 December 2023
2023-25 PEEL inspection
Grades
8 areas
Causes of concern
None
in the latest PEEL report
Greater Manchester HMICFRS snapshot
What the inspectors found
Greater Manchester Police was graded good for preventing crime and leadership and force management in the 2023-25 PEEL inspection, published December 2023. Most areas were graded adequate. The force requires improvement only in managing offenders.
PEEL grades
- Managing offendersRequires improvement
- WorkforceAdequate
- Police powersAdequate
- Investigating crimeAdequate
- Responding to publicAdequate
- Protecting vulnerableAdequate
- LeadershipGood
- Preventing crimeGood
Areas for improvement
- The force needs to improve its training to make sure officers understand and record the use of stop and search powers
- The force should review how it works with communities that traditionally interact less often with the police or may have lower levels of trust and confidence
- The force needs to attend calls for service within its published time frames
- The force doesn't consistently achieve appropriate outcomes for victims
- The force should use a quality assurance process to make sure that standard-risk domestic abuse incidents are accurately assessed by the attending officers
- The force should make sure that all staff working within a multi-agency safeguarding hub are trained to assess the level of risk
Show the other 5 areas for improvementHide the extra areas for improvement
- The force needs to review how it monitors its requirement to visit registered sex offenders to make sure it quickly manages risk
- The force should make sure that quick and appropriate child protection safeguarding referrals are in place when managing the risk posed by online child abuse offenders
- The force should improve its monitoring and continually risk-assess any backlogs in online child abuse referrals and those cases awaiting enforcement action
- The force needs to improve the effectiveness of its personal development reviews, which should be consistent across the workforce and valued by all
- The force needs to do more to support the development and career progression of people from under-represented groups
11 areas were identified in the full inspection. Inside State6, each is mapped to the CVF competencies it affects, so you know exactly what to evidence.
Source: Greater Manchester’s inspection reports on the HMICFRS website.
In their own words
What Greater Manchester says it is focused on
The inspection picture above is what HMICFRS found. These are the priorities Greater Manchester and its Mayor have set for themselves, and the people on your panel work to them every day.
Police and Crime Plan 2024 to 2029
Set by the Mayor of Greater Manchester and the Deputy Mayor for Safer and Stronger Communities, who hold the commissioner role here. It is published under the name Standing Together and was launched on 18 December 2024.
- Improving public trust and confidence in policing
- Increasing police accessibility, consistency, responsiveness and outcomes
- Keeping children and young people safe and preventing them from becoming involved in crime
- Improving support for victims of crime, including vulnerable victims, and tackling emerging crime types
- Reducing and preventing neighbourhood crime, retail crime and anti-social behaviour
- Improving road and transport safety, so people can travel around our city-region safely
- Reducing high harm repeat offending, taking a preventative and diversionary approach
- Tackling drug, alcohol and wider addictions
- Reducing and preventing gender-based violence and all forms of serious violence
- Reducing and tackling serious and organised crime
Plan on a Page 2026 to 2029
Set by the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police. Its title is Achieving Outstanding Policing, and its stated purpose is to do the basics brilliantly. Stated aim: To provide Greater Manchester with the best police force in the United Kingdom.
- Respond to incidents and emergenciesAnswering calls and reaching the people who need help quickly.
- Investigate, solve crime and bring offenders to justiceMore crimes solved and more offenders brought to justice.
- Prevent and reduce crime, harm and anti-social behaviourA neighbourhood policing team in every area, working on the problems residents raise.
- Care for victims and support the most vulnerableCompassionate, effective victim care, with child protection named as an area to be outstanding in.
- Build public trust, confidence and satisfactionQuality, standards and behaviour, judged by whether the public say they feel safe, trust the force and are satisfied.
Use these to choose which of your examples to tell, not as phrases to recite. An answer about a team problem lands harder when the panel can see it serves something the force has already said matters.
Priority names are the publishers’ own headings. The summaries are ours. Checked against the published documents on 7 October 2026.
What this means for your board
Greater Manchester is graded Requires improvement for managing offenders. Its Police and Crime Plan 2024 to 2029 leads with the priority “Improving public trust and confidence in policing”. Your panel knows both without looking it up, and an example that speaks to either is one they will recognise.
A promotion board at Greater Manchester isn’t only assessing whether you can lead a team. It’s assessing whether you understand the force you’re asking to lead in, and where your leadership fits its priorities. Officers who connect their examples to what Greater Manchester is actually focused on stand out. Officers who stay inside their own team don’t.
You don’t do this by quoting the inspection report. You do it by letting your force’s priorities shape the decisions in your answers. If you want the full method, read our guide on what HMICFRS grades mean for your promotion board, or compare every force’s PEEL grades side by side.
How State6 prepares you for Greater Manchester
You don’t have to research any of this yourself. Greater Manchester’s real HMICFRS picture is built into State6. The Question Bank shapes practice questions around it, and every AI Board Review weaves your force’s context into the feedback on your answers. You’re preparing for the board you’ll actually sit, at the force you’ll actually sit it in.
You can also sit a full voiced AI mock board calibrated to Greater Manchester’s inspection picture, answering out loud while the panel listens, probes and scores you against the CVF 2024.
Calibrated to your target rank, too. See what panels look for at sergeant, inspector and chief inspector level.
Prefer to start free? Our free promotion board question bank gives you real questions for every CVF area at sergeant, inspector and chief inspector level, free to download as you prepare for your Greater Manchester board.
Prepare for your Greater Manchester board
Practice questions, AI board reviews and your force’s inspection picture, all in one place. Try it free first: one AI Board Review, ten practice questions, fifteen coaching rounds and one spoken mock board question, no card needed.
State6 is an independent preparation platform and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Greater Manchester, the College of Policing or HMICFRS. Inspection findings are summarised from the publicly available HMICFRS PEEL reports.
HMICFRS inspection data: Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.