College of Policing ELP Preparation

The Executive Leaders Programme is the most senior leadership development a UK police officer or staff member will undertake, and the stakes around it are high. For the individual candidate, the question is not how to revise a framework, it is how to perform the behaviours a senior assessment is looking for when the room is unfamiliar and the pressure is real. That is a behavioural problem, not an information problem, and behavioural problems are what Sidestream exists to solve. This page sets out how we support ELP candidates, what the programme is, and why our policing experience and immersive method suit this kind of preparation.

What the College of Policing Executive Leaders Programme Is

The Executive Leaders Programme, usually shortened to the ELP, is run by the College of Policing, the professional body for policing in England and Wales. The College describes the ELP as its programme for executive leaders, which replaced the Strategic Command Course in 2023 and now sits as stage 5 of the police leadership programme. It is positioned as the development route towards the most senior, chief-officer roles in policing.

According to the College, the ELP is a 19-week programme built around three modules, covering personal and inclusive leadership, organisational leadership and operational leadership. It uses a blended design: a mix of face-to-face sessions, guided online learning, a short professional placement, experiential learning in role, and working with an executive coach. The College states that the programme is open to substantive superintendents, chief superintendents, equivalent-grade police staff, and aspiring executives from international and partner agencies. For the authoritative and current detail of structure, eligibility and application windows, candidates should always rely on the College of Policing directly. The summary here is provided only to frame how preparation can help.

The ELP Development Centre

One element of the programme that lends itself to preparation is the development centre. The College of Policing runs a national development centre as part of the ELP, held at its Harperley Hall site, where endorsed applicants attend for several consecutive days. A development centre is a developmental form of assessment: it uses a set of exercises and structured observation to assess a person's potential and development needs against a framework, with the emphasis on growth rather than a simple pass or fail. We explain the format in general in our companion guide on development centre preparation.

What matters for preparation is the nature of the experience. A development centre asks a candidate to demonstrate behaviour, not to describe it, across exercises observed against defined criteria. A candidate who has rehearsed that kind of experience and received honest feedback on how they came across is better prepared than one who has only read about it. Sidestream does not reproduce the College's specific exercises, which are theirs, but we do build realistic mock exercises that rehearse the same behavioural demands so the experience itself is no longer unfamiliar.

How Sidestream Prepares ELP Candidates

Sidestream supports individual candidates with a personalised programme assembled from four components. We tailor the mix to where the candidate is in the process and what they most need.

Executive coaching

One-to-one executive coaching is the backbone of the preparation we offer. It gives a senior officer a confidential space to work on the leadership behaviours that the programme and its assessment foreground: personal and inclusive leadership, decision-making under scrutiny, and the move from operational command to organisational and strategic leadership. Our coaching is informed by organisational-psychology research from UCL, Cambridge and Bocconi, and it is framed around the behaviours the CVF describes. For the broader picture of how we coach senior public-sector leaders, see our guide to public-sector executive coaching.

Mentoring

Alongside formal coaching, we offer mentoring, its more directive companion: where coaching helps a candidate find their own answers, mentoring offers a frank outside view and direct advice on how the candidate comes across and where their preparation is still thin. The distinction between the two, and how they work together, is something we set out in our guide on the difference between coaching and mentoring.

Online assessment

We use online assessment to give candidates an evidence-based starting point. Structured assessment of leadership style, behavioural preferences and self-perception gives a candidate a clear, honest baseline to develop from, and it counters a well-documented trap: people are often confident about skills they have not actually demonstrated. The 2020 UCL study behind our method found no relationship between participants' confidence and their blind-rated performance. The wider pattern is described in our guide to the Dunning-Kruger effect. Assessment turns "I think I lead inclusively" into evidence a candidate can work on.

Mock development-centre exercises with professional actors

This is the component that most distinguishes Sidestream. We design mock development-centre exercises and run them with professional actors, so the candidate rehearses under realistic interpersonal pressure rather than talking through what they would hypothetically do. A scenario with a skilled actor playing a challenging colleague, a distressed member of the public or a sceptical stakeholder produces real behaviour, and real behaviour is what can be developed. Each exercise is followed by structured, personalised feedback framed against the CVF competencies and values. The principle is the same one that runs through all of Sidestream's work, and it is the basis of our wider role-play training: behaviour changes through lived rehearsal, not through being told.

Aligned to the Competency and Values Framework

Senior leadership assessment and development in policing is read against the College of Policing's Competency and Values Framework, the CVF. The framework sets out six competencies, each written at three levels, and four values that apply to everyone in policing regardless of role. Because the CVF is the standard the system uses, Sidestream frames its coaching, mentoring and feedback around it: a candidate does not just receive a general impression of how they performed, they receive feedback mapped to the competencies and values that matter. We set the framework out in full in our companion guide, what is the College of Policing CVF, which is the definitional reference behind this preparation work.

Our Policing Experience

Preparation for a senior policing assessment only carries weight if the people delivering it understand policing, so it is fair to ask what our own connection to the service is. The Metropolitan Police is on our verified client list. With Met Police Lewisham and the Innocence Project, we produced The Death of Jane Doe, our CorpComms-recognised production addressing mental health stigma in frontline policing.

The production dealt with the front line rather than senior command, so we bring it to candidate preparation as experience of working alongside a police force, not as insight into executive assessment. Separately, Top of the Cops is our leadership and reputation-management programme for cross-sector leaders. As one cohort participant put it, "An 80s punk gig as a masterclass in leadership and reputation management? Pure genius." You can read more about our policing work in our police leadership training guide and across our case studies.

How We Measure Whether Preparation Is Working

We hold ourselves to the same standard we ask of candidates: observable change, not a satisfied feeling at the end of a session. Across our mock exercises and coaching, we look at how a candidate's behaviour shifts between the first rehearsal and the later ones, which is assessment at the level of behaviour rather than reaction. This is Level 3 of the Kirkpatrick model, the level concerned with changed behaviour in practice, and we explain that framework in our guide to the Kirkpatrick model. The point of preparation is not to feel ready, it is to behave differently when it counts.

An Honest Word on Independence

Sidestream is an independent behaviour-change consultancy. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or delivering the College of Policing Executive Leaders Programme, and we make no claim to insider knowledge of its specific exercises. The ELP itself, including the development centre, the eligibility criteria, the application windows and the assessment, is run entirely by the College of Policing, and candidates should always treat the College as the authoritative source. What we offer is independent preparation: coaching, mentoring, assessment and realistic behavioural rehearsal that help a candidate be at their best in a process the College owns. We would rather state that plainly than overclaim.

How to Start

The first step is a short, honest conversation. Bring your timeline, your development goals and a sense of where you feel least prepared. We will discuss what combination of coaching, mentoring, online assessment and mock development-centre exercises would be most useful for you, and we will be candid about whether our support is the right fit for your situation. If it is not, we will say so.

Book a free 30-min consultation. Or read more in our companion guides: what is the College of Policing CVF, development centre preparation, police leadership training, public-sector executive coaching and role-play training.

Related guides: Development Centre & Assessment Centre Preparation, What is the College of Policing CVF? and Law Enforcement & Policing Leadership Development.