Safer neighbourhoods – utilising the results of community engagement

Report: 9
Date: 2 December 2004
By: Commissioner

Summary

This report expands on how community engagement activities of Safer Neighbourhood Policing feed the setting of neighbourhood level policing activity. How this in turn will influence Borough Operational Command Unit (BOCU) local Policing Plans; Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership (CDRP) activity and inform the MPS of pan London issues.

A. Recommendation

That

1. 1. members note the report; and
2. 2. members continue to work with the Safer Neighbourhoods Programme Team in the development of effective systems for community engagement.

B. Supporting information

1. The new Safer Neighbourhoods (SN) Teams are required to engage and consult with all sections of the community within their policing area, in order to establish a list of local policing priorities that the team can target, with the help of the community and other agencies.

2. The ‘public face’ of the consultation process will be a public meeting where all the information gathered from the engagement process will be discussed and local priorities agreed.

3. The SN team officers have been identifying new and challenging ways to engage people to ensure that the consultation process is as holistic as possible and reflects the diversity of the local community.

4. The public meeting should allow the SN team to identify a list of local priorities. However, in order to establish a method of monitoring the activities to ensure they remain community focused, the teams are encouraged to establish a ‘Neighbourhood Panel’.’

5. There is at present, no guidance either national or local, that specifies the composition, activities or intended purpose of the panels. The Safer Neighbourhoods Unit is still awaiting this guidance from the National Reassurance Policing Programme, which is monitoring the effectiveness of similar groups/panels nationally. The first SN teams within the MPS are trialing a variety of structured groups/panels to assist them with the new process. Recent meetings with team leaders have highlighted the fact that there is a need for guidance to assist them with the process. The SN unit are in the process of formulating a template that will capture existing good practice.

Neighbourhood Panel

6. The purpose of this panel is to provide a forum where local people can decide upon, and prioritise, team activity within their neighbourhood. The SN team will then formulate plans utilising the problem solving process, and take appropriate actions to deal with them. They will be accountable to the group/panel for feeding back the effectiveness of the agreed activity undertaken. Representatives from the group are encouraged to take an active part in the problem solving activity.

7. The groups’ main activities are:

• To review and prioritise the actions for the teams, partners and community volunteers.
• To monitor and evaluate the activity of the team and partners towards the priorities.
• To receive community feedback as to the actions taken and to assist in the problem solving process.
• In some cases assist with the recording of decisions made at each of the meetings.

8. These groups will normally meet on a monthly basis. The public meetings in most neighbourhoods are held on a 6 to 8 week basis. Members of the group will be asked to attend each public meeting to feedback to other community members’ information on the activities of the SN team and partners since the last meeting.

9. The membership of the panel should be representative of those who live and work within the neighbourhood. The members should be residents from the community, residents groups, neighbourhood watch, business representatives and other relevant local organisations. In some cases local elected members can form part of the group although the group must remain a non-political forum.

10 The selection of the community members can be made within the public meetings to ensure a fair and well-represented sample of the community are chosen. Others can be selected during the engagement process that will assist the team in obtaining representatives from hard to hear and diverse groups within the community.

11. Members of the Safer Neighbourhood team and other key service providers should also form part of the group.

Impact on Sector Working Groups.

12. The existence of the neighbourhood panels in each SN area, will undoubtedly duplicate and in some areas may conflict with the work of the old sector working groups, which in most areas cover between 3 to 5 wards.

13. The Sector working groups will meet and discuss issues that are relevant to the wider area. These groups are normally attended by the Police Inspector, and in most cases, unlike the neighbourhood panels the forum is used as a platform for discussion and not for direct action planning against selected local priorities.

14. The neighbourhood panel will deliver action on a more localised basis and may well negate the need for the existence of a sector-working group. The decision to replace the sector working groups that still reflect the old sector policing model will have to be made at Borough level.

Community and Police Consultative Groups (CPCGs)

15. The purpose of these groups is to enable the MPA to meet their statutory requirements to engage and consult at borough level with the communities of London. They should be used to capture local concerns and feed them back centrally to enable the MPA to formulate the annual policing plan priorities. In fact in most cases they are used as a forum for communities to challenge the Borough Commander as to why the police have or haven’t tackled some of the problems of the borough.

16. The future roll out of SN teams across the MPS will be able to identify common areas of concern across all areas of London. This may well cause duplication with the current CPCG process establishing the same information.

17. Most boroughs have between 16 and 24 wards, which will result in the same number of groups/panels. Future CPCGs may be better informed by inviting representatives from these groups into a consultative forum to obtain the necessary community feedback at a Borough level.

18. The impact of localised public meetings, where action to address local priorities are discussed and agreed may well attract the people who would have otherwise attended the borough wide PCCG meetings.

Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership

19. As already indicated, the process of consultation within each neighbourhood will identify priority areas of Crime and Disorder that directly impact on people’s feelings of insecurity. Some Boroughs have in excess of 20 neighbourhoods/wards, which in turn will produce in excess of 600 priority areas once the programme is fully rolled out across London.

20. The Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership will need to examine the priority areas for their neighbourhoods and will then prioritise the common themes, agreeing them within the group. This will ensure the commitment of all partners, for the delivery of resources and services required to assist with tackling these across the Borough. (An example would be where most neighbourhoods identify ‘Youth Disorder and Vandalism’ as the main areas of concern, these should be prioritised by the CDRP as areas for joint action and service delivery.)

21. The CDRP Strategy will reflect the neighbourhood priorities agreed. This will be used to inform and direct a Joint Agency Group (JAG).

Joint Agency Groups (JAGs)

22. The JAG will coordinate joint activity that fall within the priority areas set within the Partnership Control Strategy. This will be effective in aligning both police and partnership resources and responses. Many Boroughs already have such groups in existence, most of which operate at middle management level.

23. The JAG receives requests for assistance from Safer Neighbourhoods Teams or partners where there is a requirement for:

• Additional resources.
• Specialist assistance or,
• Joint coordinated activity.

24. The police representative on the JAG will be able to take any requests from that group for additional or specialist police resources to the police tasking and coordinating group meeting.

Pan London issues

25. This information has come from two main sources of information. Firstly, in each of the 96 Safer Neighbourhoods that have gone 'live', interviews were conducted with 100 residents. These interviews have generated prioritised local issues of concern and ward maps which identify areas where people feel unsafe. This information has been fed back to local teams to inform and direct their policing activity

26. Some research work has been done that confirms a link between people's fear of crime and their sense of how cohesive their local community is; in short, fear of crime tends to be higher in areas where a sense of a community spirit is lacking.

27. The Safer Neighbourhood Unit will collate the priority issues raised in each of the neighbourhoods and collate the common areas of work.

28. Information from the first 96 neighbourhoods has already been feedback to the MPA Community Engagement Committee. This has given a very good indication as to the common areas of concern currently raised by communities across London.

29. The MPS has not yet built this bottom- up priority setting into the MPS Police Plan for 2005/06. However, the rich body of information being collected and evaluated at a Borough and pan- London level of the viewpoints of Londoners from the neighbourhood level policing activity should be linked to the work being conducted by the Strategic Consultation Unit (DCC2(5)).

Updates for the Community Engagement Committee

30. In addition to the regular forum that has been established between senior officers of the Safer Neighbourhoods and officers of the MPA Community Engagement Unit, it is proposed that the MPA Community Engagement Committee receive reports analysing the results of community engagement activity undertaken by the Safer Neighbourhood teams and that the data be presented on a borough and pan-London basis. It is also proposed that the Committee receive reports evaluating the range of community engagement methods employed by Safer Neighbourhood teams.

C. Race and equality impact

Whilst there are no issues directly impacting on race and equality in of this paper, clearly the aim of the consultation strategy is to ensure that all areas of local communities are fully engaged. Further all BOCUs have been tasked to conduct a Equality Impact Assessment on their local Policing Plans through engagement with local communities and in consultation with their CDRPs.

D. Financial implications

No financial implications in this report.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author: David Palmer DCI

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

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