Meeting as the Crime and Disorder Committee, to discuss with representatives of Thames Valley Police and Council representatives of the Community Safety Partnership:
1 The performance of the Community Safety Partnership in 2013-14
2 The Community Safety Plan for 2014-15
3 How the Probation Service contributes to meeting the objectives of the Community Safety Partnership.
Minutes:
Meeting as the Crime and Disorder Committee, Assistant Chief Constable John Campbell, Chief Inspector Dave Gilbert, Timothy Wheadon Chairman of the Community Safety Partnership, Ian Boswell Community Safety Manager and Alison Koen, Community Safety Officer, were welcomed to the meeting.
Ian Boswell, Community Safety Manager gave a presentation in respect of the performance of the Bracknell Forest Community Safety Partnership during 2013-14. The presentation included an overview of the Partnership’s make up, priorities and challenges, resourcing and comparator data.
The Community Safety Partnership was a statutory partnership which was well supported by all agencies involved in its work. Both statutory and non-statutory partners were fully engaged with the Partnership’s work bringing their own areas of expertise to the table.
For the past few years, Thames Valley Police and the Community Safety Team had been focused on reducing crime levels across the area and tackling the public’s disproportionate fear of crime. Work that was proving successful as crime levels continued to fall. Total recorded crime levels were now at their lowest level since 1998 and between 2008/9 and 2013/14 there had been a 42% drop in recorded crime. The innovative development of a Community Safety Team that was shared between the Police and the Local Authority and the strength of the Bracknell Forest Community Safety Partnership, were considered to be key to this success. Measures of note for the Partnership during 2013-14 included:
It was reported that when compared against the performance of the closest fourteen
comparator police areas Bracknell Forest LPA had been ranked as being the fifth best performing LPA in the comparator group. The independently managed Crime Survey of England and Wales also indicated a significant drop in the levels of crime experienced in the Borough over the past year.
In December 2013, the Community Safety Partnership carried out a strategic assessment the results of which were subsequently used to inform the Community safety Partnership’s 12 crime and disorder priorities for 2014/15. Of these twelve priorities tackling Domestic Abuse and IT related crime and internet safety would be key work areas over the coming year.
Tackling domestic abuse was seen as being a key priority area for the Partnership during 2014/15 not only because of the impact that it had on victims but also because of the impact that it would have on other priority areas. Domestic abuse had a broad definition that covered threats, harassment, fear of intimidation and violence against a person and whilst the statistics relating to domestic abuse were rising a significant amount of work had taken place to raise awareness of the problem and encourage reporting and the rise gave the police confidence that people were becoming more willing to come forward and report the problem.
Tackling domestic abuse was a cross cutting piece of work and a number of initiatives were already taking place in an effort to reduce levels including the Domestic Abuse Service Co-ordination (DASC) Service which was working with 2 cohorts of 90 perpetrators and their victims, the Domestic Abuse Perpetrator Service (DAPS) which was working with perpetrators where children who were on child protection plans due to domestic abuse were present and PICADA a programme of positive interventions for children affected by domestic abuse.
Arising from members’ questions and comments the following points were noted:
The Police and Crime Commissioner had commended the performance of the Bracknell Forest LPA and acknowledged that the strength of the Community Safety Partnership played a significant role in this successful performance citing it as an exemplar in of close positive work.
The Commission thanked Assistant Chief Constable John Campbell, Chief Inspector
Dave Gilbert, Timothy Wheadon, Ian Boswell and Alison Koen for their informative update and commended the work of the Community Safety Partnership.
Supporting documents: