Nick honoured at detective awards ceremony

11 October 2019

A West Midlands DC who has transformed the way in which detectives are trained was presented with the Services to Detectives Award at the Police Federation National Detectives’ Forum (PFNDF) awards.

Nick Mills spent 23 years as a detective, 17 of which were in homicide – with six working on the major crime review team – before moving into training in 2014 and instigating a new approach to how detectives are trained, with an emphasis on making it as inclusive as possible.

He is credited with revolutionising the way the Force delivers the Initial Crime Investigators’ Development Programme and his ground-breaking work has been recognised by the College of Policing.

Nevertheless, Nick was humbled to have been put forward for the PFNDF awards and says he was just doing his job.

“It was really nice to be honoured in this way. It’s particularly lovely to receive an award for services to detectives and to be recognised for helping make the lives of new detectives a little bit better through improving the way in which training is delivered. I feel very proud,” he says.

“At the awards, you hear so many stories about such incredible and complex investigations but I see my role as support, putting the training together and providing new investigators with the best possible start as they move on to deal with such critical investigations.

“It’s really important to make the detective role as inclusive as possible but the training programme used to be a six-week course which inevitably precluded many officers making it onto the CID. For many officers being at Tally Ho! at 8am five days a week was impossible, partly because of their personal circumstances such as child care or carer commitments but also operationally. Losing staff for six-week periods is difficult to manage as officer numbers reduce and demand increases.”

He adds: “When I first became a detective it was a six-week residential course which was even less inclusive. Although there is still work to do, we really have moved on.

“We looked at different and better ways of doing things and we currently run the training in eight modules over 25 days, some modules are three days’ long some are four, some involve a lesson in a lecture theatre but many are practical workshops covering everything from domestic abuse to missing persons and from modern slavery to honour-based killings.”

The PFNDF awards were held as part of a two-day seminar at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole this week with the work of detectives across the country recognised by their peers.

In addition to Nick’s award, West Midlands DC Kelly Mahon was named as the regional winner for the Detective Recognition Awards for her work in child abuse investigation.

• More details of the awards will feature in the October/November edition of our Federation magazine.