Multi-year support to the FCDO and the Royal Montserrat Police Service (RMPS), delivering a complex change programme on a small-island Overseas Territory.
Montserrat's police service needed to modernise, rebuild public trust, and establish specialist capabilities - safeguarding, maritime, financial investigation, intelligence - within the constraints of a small, geographically exposed island.
Since May 2021, Salterton has sustained a blended programme of strategic advisors, specialist trainers, and embedded mentors for the Commissioner, complemented by community-led design of a trauma-informed Safeguarding Hub and multi-agency governance arrangements.
The Royal Montserrat Police Service (RMPS) required sustained external support to strengthen leadership, modernise operational practice, and develop capabilities that had not previously existed in-island. The context was demanding: a small organisation, a compressed local labour market, and a community where stigma and close social ties could suppress disclosure of harm. Specialist functions — advanced investigative interviewing, financial investigation, intelligence management, maritime policing, professional standards — all needed to be built or rebuilt, alongside the design and delivery of a dedicated Safeguarding Hub and associated multi-agency arrangements. The programme also had to manage the realities of procurement and construction on a small island, and to earn community trust through visible, consistent engagement.
Rather than impose an off-the-shelf reform package, Salterton deployed sequenced specialists around the Commissioner's priorities - pairing a long-term Strategic Policing Advisor with short, targeted interventions in intelligence, interviewing, maritime, financial investigation, and professional standards. Every consultant was briefed to mentor as well as deliver, to engage with the community, and to leave behind a trained cadre and revised practice. The Safeguarding Hub was treated as a whole-system design exercise - trauma-informed architecture, multi-agency governance, secure data handling, and community voice gathered by door-to-door survey - not simply a building project.
Operating on a small island meant thin local capacity, a compressed supplier base, and cultural dynamics where stigma could suppress disclosure of abuse. A serious accident curtailed one key deployment mid-quarter. Legacy cultural patterns in parts of RMPS - including in the Marine Unit, and resistance among some supervisors to new financial investigation practice - needed careful, non-confrontational handling. The construction environment on Montserrat meant procurement and build timelines for the Hub required constant active management.
Consultants were selected for the depth of their operational background and briefed to bring supervisors and trainees along the change journey rather than deliver finished solutions over their heads. Female advisors were deliberately deployed into visible leadership, mentoring and training roles to role-model change and support the Women in Policing agenda. Relationships were built early and widely - with the Attorney General, DPP, Financial Services Commission, FIU, Customs, Bank of Montserrat, Christian Council, Red Cross, and the Montserrat People's Disability Association - so that recommendations landed into an informed stakeholder network. Sustained engagement with local suppliers, women-led providers and charities kept the programme rooted in the community.
The programme delivered comprehensive professional standards reform, established a safeguarding hub, created an economic crime unit, built emergency response capability and designed a multi-agency control room. We delivered new police regulations training, established intelligence capability with a Crime Stoppers partnership, and built sustainable local capacity across multiple policing disciplines.
Multi Agency Major Incident Training was delivered by Salterton Associates in Montserrat between 30 October and 3 November 2023. The programme comprised blended learning, with some didactic delivery of new knowledge and a large proportion of participant centred group and individual work. It was based on Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Principles (JESIP) but also incorporated the principles of the UK National Risk Register and the emergency planning principles of the UK Civil Contingencies Act 2004.
User testing and then roll out of the upgraded Overseas Territories Regional Criminal Intelligence System (OTRCIS) which includes practically training, coaching and mentoring of all staff within the police service and other agencies of a British Overseas Territory (BOTs) to enhance organisational capability and capacity of business activity/service delivery moving from paper-based processes to a digitalised platform.
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