West Midlands Promotion Board Preparation
If you’re preparing for a Sergeant, Inspector or Chief Inspector board at West Midlands, your panel already knows your force’s inspection picture. Here’s what that means for you, and how State6 builds it into your preparation.
West Midlands HMICFRS snapshot
Most recent PEEL inspection: 2023-25 PEEL inspection
West Midlands was graded inadequate in three areas in the 2023-25 PEEL inspection: investigating crime, protecting vulnerable people, and managing offenders - among the most serious findings of any force. The force also requires improvement in five other areas.
PEEL grades
- Workforce: Requires improvement
- Leadership: Requires improvement
- Police powers: Adequate
- Preventing crime: Adequate
- Managing offenders: Inadequate
- Investigating crime: Inadequate
- Responding to public: Requires improvement
- Protecting vulnerable: Inadequate
Causes of concern
- Investigating crime
- Protecting vulnerable people
- Managing offenders and suspects
Areas for improvement
- The force needs to make sure it complies with the requirement from the National Police Chiefs' Council to record all use of force, and make sure its data is accurate and robust enough to understand any reasons for disproportionate use of force
- The force needs to make sure that neighbourhood officers aren't diverted away from their main duties due to demand on response teams
- The force's systems and management processes need to support it in embedding effective problem-solving
- The force needs to make sure it answers emergency calls quickly enough
- The force needs to reduce the number of non-emergency calls the caller abandons because they aren't answered
- The force needs to meet its published targets for attending calls for service
Plus 11 more areas identified in the full inspection. Inside State6, each is mapped to the CVF competencies it affects, so you know exactly what to evidence.
Recent inspection activity
Inspections published since the last full PEEL assessment. These are often the most current picture of West Midlands, and the areas your panel is most likely to be conscious of right now.
Child protection inspection · 21 November 2025
West Midlands Police: National child protection inspection
West Midlands Police is good at working with safeguarding partners. It is adequate at leadership of child protection arrangements.
What this means for your board
A promotion board at West Midlands 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 West Midlands 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.
How State6 prepares you for West Midlands
You don’t have to research any of this yourself. West Midlands’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 West Midlands’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.
Prepare for your West Midlands board
Practice questions, AI board reviews and your force’s inspection picture, all in one place. Choose a plan and start building today.
Get started with State6 →State6 is an independent preparation platform and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to West Midlands, the College of Policing or HMICFRS. Inspection findings are summarised from the publicly available HMICFRS PEEL reports.