Free course

Understanding PCSO powers

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Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) play a vital role in modern policing. They often serve as the primary point of contact for communities to report concerns and share information. In this free course, you’ll explore the powers that PCSOs in England and Wales use in their daily duties, their role in supporting response policing, and the fair and unbiased exercise of their powers and procedures.

This course is a preview of BXY138 Professional PCSO practice (work-based learning), part of the PCSO apprenticeship programme offered jointly by The Open University and North Yorkshire Police.

Upon completion, you’ll be able to identify relevant legislation, understand power assignment, and recognise situations where PCSOs can exercise their authority, enhancing your understanding of this vital role in community safety.

Course learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

identify key legislation outlining PCSO powers in England and Wales
understand how powers are designated to a PCSO
recognise certain situations where a PCSO can exercise their powers.

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First Published: 29/01/2024

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Janine Twelftree 2 August 2024 7:11PM

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This course as loaded on OpenLearn isn't fully useful for the public to learn more about what PCSOs and Police do; I was hoping it would, but some parts of the course are not accessible to the public. I get this message when clicking one of the links in the course: "Sorry, but you do not currently have permissions to do that (Access the content bank)". This was for a main course link, where it promised to tell us what PCSOs can do but which Police Officers cannot. I got the same cannot-access-content-bank message when trying the link 'PCSO Traffic related Powers', so I cannot have course information on that either.
So I was left none the wiser, and doubt I can progress through the course.
I hope the OU read these comments, and it can be fixed.

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Understanding PCSO powers

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