MPA Partnership Visits 2003/04

Report: 6
Date: 29 April 2004
By: Clerk

Summary

A third programme of MPA meetings with London’s Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships was carried out between October 2003 and March 2004. This report provides information on the issues addressed at these meetings.

A. Recommendation

That the report be noted.

B. Supporting information

Background

1. Each year the MPA has invited each Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership (CDRP) to meet with and present to the Chair of the Authority its work, achievements and issues for the MPA to consider. A third round of annual meetings has now been completed. This round took place between October 2003 and March 2004. Meetings were held with 29 of the 32 boroughs.

2. The meetings took the form of a presentation from the partnership, usually from the borough commander and a local authority chief officer, followed by questions from the Chair and general discussion. Attendees have comprised representatives from partnership boards, local political leadership including Councillors and Members of Parliament, project and community safety staff, community invitees and the local media. The MPA link member often accompanied the Chair as well as a partnership support officer. The size and composition of the meetings varied and was determined locally.

Acknowledgement to partnerships

3. The Chair of the Authority would like to take the opportunity at this meeting to thank each partnership formally for its reception and the engaging presentations and contributions each provided. The hard work put into making the meetings of high interest to the Authority was recognised as was the many competing demands and pressures upon the time of everyone involved. It is hoped the meetings proved worthwhile for partnerships too. As will be shown in this report, much has been learnt. The Authority will strive to share the findings and practice identified and influence the policing agenda in London as its role warrants.

Findings and analysis

4. A general note of each meeting had been produced. This report has been produced from a distillation of these. It aims to provide feedback to the MPA, partnerships, the MPS and other interested parties.

5. The synopsis provided, as a separate appendix (Appendix 1), is intended to serve as a broad, qualitative summary of the key themes of interest to the MPA as were discussed at the meetings. The report is not laid out in any specific order of priority, nor the points within each section. Whilst there was much commendable work noted, the report does not attribute comments and examples to specific partnerships. For further details about the practices and issues raised in this report, the MPA’s Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships Team should be contacted.

6. It is hoped that through this feedback, stakeholders can use these findings to inform, develop and review their policies and actions.

7. Members may use the report to identify specific areas they would seek the MPA and/or MPS to explore, progress and develop further. Members are therefore invited to comment upon the report.

8. It is also suggested that the Authority would wish to commend to the Commissioner the work of all borough commands within CDRPs and the ways in which they are positively engaging in partnership working.

C. Race and equality impact

The report aims to raise issues concerning hate crime, inclusive consultation and community engagement higher on the agenda of all CDRPs. No adverse impacts are anticipated for any of the MPA’s equality priority groups as a result of this report.

D. Financial implications

None specific arising from this report. The Authority will decide on the future continuation of this process and its format following the appointment of the Authority’s new administration in 2004.

E. Background papers

• Meeting notes

F. Contact details

Report author: Jude Sequeira, Partnerships Officer, MPA.

For more information contact:

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

Appendix 1

MPA report back from Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership meetings 2003/04

Success factors

Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs) were asked to report their successes. They were also asked to identify what they saw as the factors for success. The commonly identified factors included:

• Good multi-agency working - energy, enthusiasm, shared objectives and contributions from all agencies involved.
• Action which is highly visible, including police patrols.
• The effective use of intelligence.
• Targeted and highly focused work.
• Dealing with root problems and causes e.g. drug issues.
• Initiatives supported by preventative measures and awareness campaigns.
• The personal qualities and drive of people involved.
• Good internal and external communication.
• A good balance struck between responsive and pro-active work e.g. to place appropriate emphasis upon dealing with repeat victimisation or early intervention etc.
• A fluid and flexible approach – being able to shift between changing needs and demands and dropping that which isn’t working.
• Involving community groups and victims in the design of new initiatives as well as providing community liaison/advocacy. Community buy-in generally.

On barriers to success, they included sustainability and continuity, most notably linked to funding and staff turnover.

Partnership structures and processes

CDRPs have been in existence since 1998. Their structures and processes are still developing and the Police Reform Act 2002 amended the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 setting new structural requirements upon them, including the incorporation of police authorities as statutory partners. The meetings gave a sense that the former lead agencies – the police and local authorities - are working more closely than ever before. It is evident that the MPS, at borough level, is in good constructive dialogue with the local authority and other partners, resulting in it being more responsive to their needs and showing good co-operation on inter-agency issues such as Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) and hate crime. It has opened itself well to local scrutiny of performance. Local authorities, on their part, have sought to impress at the meetings their mainstreaming of crime and disorder within their range of services. Several have also appointed cabinet members with community safety portfolios. The co-operation between local authorities and the Borough Command Units (BCUs), as well as the other partners, is demonstrated in many practical ways including co-located staff, single points of contact and co-ordination, pooled budgets, linked consultation processes and websites, joint tasking and data-sharing. BCUs have shown themselves to be much more responsive to low level disorder issues in addition to their corporate priorities. Overall, the energy and enthusiasm within partnerships is very much more apparent, when compared to previous meeting rounds.

Many partnerships have or are restructuring in response to the incorporation of new statutory partners, mergers with Drugs Action Teams and links with Youth Offending Teams, often seeking a rationalisation of board members and sub-groups to improve focus. The links with Local Strategic Partnerships often appear more paper-based than overt. The presence of the new partners is noticeable. The fire service, for example, demonstrated in several boroughs pro-active engagement with CDRPs e.g. with respect to safety in the home, vehicle arson and support with diversionary schemes.

As an outcome of the closer working and stronger strategic management evident, many partnerships are now being supported by revamped community safety/crime reduction teams. These, based at town halls and occasionally police stations, often pull together staff formerly placed in other directorates and secondments from different agencies.

One criticism that has continued from previous rounds is the turnover of senior police staff. The complaint is that this impacts upon continuity and leadership. In some boroughs, partners have felt too remote from decisions made with regards to such changes, although they would accept the circumstances in place.

Performance

Partnerships each reported performance against their crime reduction targets. Current performance in boroughs is well documented in other reports to the Authority (so is not covered with specifics here). Generally speaking though, credit should be given to all partnerships as each has achieved reductions in many crime categories against local, London-wide and national targets. Points to note include:

• Most boroughs local priorities appear to broadly match regional priorities, namely street crime, burglary and other high-level volume crime, to a greater extent than before. Criticism of any conflict in priorities was low, a main issue being the ability to meet targets on a wide front – operational trade-offs were deemed necessary. It was generally felt that the policing plan should take a more co-ordinated view of CDRP plans.
• Many boroughs have reduced crime levels in some crime categories to a very low level e.g. 1 –5 street crimes a day. Questions were asked as to how realistic it is to achieve a further percentage target reduction given the population size and geography of the areas involved. There was a reported mismatch too between local and other targets rather than priorities.
• Reassurance work and high visibility policing will continue to lag behind a responsive policing style whilst priorities and crime reduction targets are paramount.
• Any criticism of partners on policing performance usually centred on detection and judicial disposal rates where they felt these could be improved.
• Local authorities were increasingly recognising the need to invest in community safety in order to bring financial saving and rewards, particularly through the introduction of Public Service Agreement targets.

Partnership funding

The Building Safer Communities (BSC) Fund and Basic Command Unit (BCU) Fund are the main elements of partnership funding. Neighbourhood Renewal Funding has also significantly contributed to projects and initiatives. The MPA in April 2003 commenced giving BCUs £50,000 to use towards partnership work. In addition to this, one partnership referred to 113 funding streams, a situation not untypical for many. Partnerships were positive about the fact that the BSC and BCU funding particularly went direct to boroughs. They were also very positive about other long-term resources, such as new police stations and accommodation, where these were put in. However, most partnerships requested the MPA to use its influence, where possible, to place on relevant agendas their difficulties with managing the plethora of funding streams and the associated bureaucracy, and more so, the often short-term nature of these. Short-term funding makes projects unsustainable, often resulting in their termination, turbulence when their funding is coming to end and gaps in service. The issue raised is that the duration of such projects isn’t long enough to assess their effectiveness and therefore too early to mainstream these. The two key funding challenges recognised by most partnerships are their need to find ways of mainstreaming projects supported by external funding and, secondly, developing pooled budgets. The challenge presented to the MPA and MPS is to enable more devolved funding.

Safer Neighbourhoods

Partnerships were asked about their approach and response to the ‘Safer Neighbourhoods’ initiative which aims to place 3 ward-based policing teams in every borough from April 2004. The point that the officers in these teams will not be abstracted to other duties and locations was the highly valued factor about such teams. Other points to note include:

• The majority of wards chosen were selected for being crime and disorder hotspots. Many are also being put in place to complement and build upon existing programmes such as Community Safety Action Zones. It appeared that it was only in some, but not a majority of boroughs, a partnership inclusive rather than a policing decision/process to select the wards. It also appeared that public communication and consultation on the introduction of these teams was mostly going to be carried out after the teams were in place. A small number of boroughs saw this initiative as an opportunity to link with neighbouring boroughs where cross-border issues pertain by joining ward teams. Reassurance, high visibility policing and tackling the fear of crime were the criteria for the selection of non-‘hotspot’ wards.
• A common challenge cited was that concerning accommodation, both for the current instalment and future growth. The MPA was asked in several instances to examine the scope for enabling a greater sharing of accommodation between agencies as a means of improving local working relationships but also to help overcome accommodation shortfalls.
• Both partners and borough commanders raised internal issues for the MPS to address. One was the need to ensure the career structure within the MPS gives appropriate incentives and career progression opportunities to officers in Safer Neighbourhood placements in order to attract the right personnel and promote continuity. The second was scepticism about the availability of sergeants to fulfil both the new and ‘opening the shop’ commitments. A third was ensuring that the specialist back-up and support needs to be available to teams.
• One of the most common discussion points was that concerning managing expectations: e.g. local demand upon the new teams, dealing with other neighbourhoods wanting a slice of the programme; the future funding requirement in order to extend the number of wards covered.
• Other partners had grown to realise that to harness the full benefits of this approach would require their own resources being placed into it and equally so, to align their own processes and structures to support a ward-based approach. The commitment to do so appeared to be there in many boroughs. Some could already demonstrate this with joint action plans and the co-locating of staff.
• Some boroughs are planning to go beyond 3 wards through local resources with other types of model, and not just police-led models.
• Several boroughs have acquired mobile vehicle units. These are being used for community reassurance objectives. With capabilities of surveillance or use for consultation/publicity roadshows, these overt units are deemed to have a beneficial visible presence in neighbourhoods.
• Concerns were also raised about displacement impacts and cross-border issues.

Hate crime

Partnerships were asked about their work on hate crimes, an area of key interest to the MPA. Although this work is not amongst the most prominent in many partnership agendas – the priorities placed on it in each partnership varies – many partnerships were measuring and responding to hate crime in its wide range of forms. A sense was picked up about considerable work around domestic violence in particular and new efforts put into working and liaising with the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community around homophobic crime. Work on anti-social behaviour had also led to wider development of anti-harassment policies and services. On race hate crimes, many partnerships had shown a focus in promoting third party reporting sites, with several innovative examples through faith communities. The types of measures featuring in hate crime work include:

• New joint hate crime team structures and an increase in specialist/dedicated officers.
• Development of third party reporting sites and reporting packs.
• Anti-harassment policies and surveillance involving housing providers and warden services.
• Early intervention work with vulnerable people.
• Provision of training to volunteers to provide advice and support within their communities and to victims.
• Victim and witness support including customised facilities.
• Mediation services.
• Addressing repeat victimisation.
• Training programmes and awareness campaigns.
• Directories of services.
• Audits, incidence panels and local monitoring.
• Rapid response teams to deal with community advocacy and critical incidents.
• Inputs into Citizenship programmes in schools.
• Many partnerships remain unclear though on to how to measure success without knowing the true level of under-reporting, i.e. a reduction in incidents isn’t deemed an appropriate measure where a lack of confidence in service response may be a factor for under-reporting.

Information sharing

The extent of information sharing can be indicative of how well partners work together. So issues of information sharing within partnerships were explored. Progress was reported in most partnerships. Local protocols have been established and in their absence, operational staff have often collaborated across agencies to ensure an appropriate sharing of data on a day to day level. The positive developments include:

• Development of local protocols.
• Development of joint databases.
• Joint development of public websites with community safety information and data.
• Identification and tracking of high-risk offenders.
• Multi-agency mapping of crime and disorder, including anti-social behaviour.
• Joint-tasking (see below).

Several challenges were regularly cited. These include:

• Health service partners not engaged sufficiently.
• Uncertainty about the sharing of personalised data.
• Inconsistency and a duplication of work in individual boroughs, leading to calls for more national or regional direction – prepared jointly and within single agencies.

Tasking

With the growing development of uniformed and enforcement personnel, another mark of good partnership working of interest to the MPA was the extent of joint tasking. Across London, the police, warden services, PCSOs and enforcement services etc. were already attending or developing some form of joint meeting whereby current crime and disorder issues are identified and shared. Through this process offenders and locations are then prioritised, joint action agreed and deployment issues tackled. In many cases these meetings take place weekly and involve senior and intelligence staff. Others may be held at least monthly. Where this works particularly well is with agencies which have built flexibility into deployment of resources. Other useful developments noted which have complemented joint tasking include:

• Focus desks and single points of contact through which demand of a specific type can be identified and channelled to relevant teams. A pilot development which would allow staff from different agencies to use common electronic forms through hand-held devices and linked to joint databases is underway.
• The networking of radio systems.
• Co-locating officers from different agencies.
• The development of the National Intelligence Model (NIM) in a multi-agency way.
• Police involvement in the design of warden and other services.
• Multi-agency ‘blitz’ enforcement and campaign days

Areas for development are:

• The use of NIM to be developed in a partnership context, so to build upon existing frameworks rather than replace or duplicate them.
• A system for the accreditation of warden services which may help facilitate the greater involvement of warden services in joint tasking.
• Also, whilst recognising that uniformed services with a generic remit would be advantageous, most services are continuing to deploy their uniformed staff on the basis of a specific focus rather than, for example, reporting wider issues of partnership interest such as fly-tipping, abandoned vehicles etc.

Police work with schools

Links between the police and schools have grown stronger in most boroughs, with police liaison in schools more common. There is no standard application within boroughs, nor across boroughs. Nor are education services widely present at CDRP tables. Nevertheless, many positive initiatives and outcomes were presented. Some partnerships have identified criteria to assess which schools are priorities for police support. Safer Schools Partnerships have appeared to be successful and are extending across London There has also been some focus on colleges too. The key challenge identified for the MPS has been around the difficulties experienced with recruiting the right staff to this work – the success of involvement of police in schools has often been cited as people with specific attributes and drive.

Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs)

The distribution of PCSOs appears to have been carried out according to plan. Community feedback of PCSOs is said to be very positive and partnerships have reported reductions in crime and other incidents where PCSOs have been deployed. Other perceived successes (particularly when compared to Met-wide statistics) have been retention levels, black and minority ethnic recruitment and PCSOs who apply and work local to their own communities. Teething issues have mostly been sorted. Many PCSOs accompany police officers in their work. A proportion who have left, have done so to become police officers, proving a useful gateway into policing. Partnerships have sought to develop good working links between all uniformed services, including PCSOs. There has been a mix of placing these in police stations and community based teams. Some boroughs have purchased additional officers and others have explored doing so. Commonly the uses made of PCSOs have been:

• Security
• High visibility patrolling and police patrol support.
• Used as part of anti-social behaviour action plans in hotspot areas
• Community development work
• Intelligence gathering.

The key concern has been accommodation (see also RAF below). Also raised several times has been the suggestion that patrols on bikes would facilitate larger geographical areas being covered.

Community consultation

Partnership consultation with communities still appears piecemeal, disjointed, and sporadic. The emphasis has been upon developing good targeted consultation on specific issues or projects or with defined user groups e.g. young people, LGBT or faith communities etc. Through partnership funding, various one-off major consultation activities have been supported as has the development of neighbourhood and other forums, community networks, Youth Councils and independent advisory groups. As well as consultation, ‘community cohesion’ initiatives have been pursued, with objectives to involve/consult with priority groups, build community capacity and forge closer relationships between different communities. There is a greater willingness to cease supporting structures no longer working. Also, partnerships have been keen to use existing processes rather than create new ones specifically for partnership purposes. Partners are also seeking to ensure they co-ordinate activity, so as not to over-consult or duplicate work. So there have been many successes but no borough has particularly broken the on-going challenge of inclusive consultation in a systematic way. Meanwhile low level disorder issues, current news events and locality crime remain the common debating points within many forums.

MPA partnership fund

Reports were given on the uses made of the £50k given to each partnership. A fuller report is planned for the Authority when year-end details are analysed. Key points to be raised at this stage include:

• The funding has been welcomed, particularly the flexible nature of this.
• Uses have been diverse but work with young people and victims of crime and communication projects have featured regularly. The funding has helped maintain key projects and provided more effective co-ordination of work e.g. through funding anti-social behaviour co-ordinators. So the funding has reached local priorities and needs.
• Further clarification of the funding to partnerships will assist their use of this funding but the intention will remain to keep the flexibility of this fund as high as possible and bureaucracy as low as is required.

Resource Allocation Formula

The MPA has established a second review of the basis upon which police officers and other resources are allocated to boroughs. Workshops and consultation on revising the formula has been underway during this round of visits. The meetings have therefore provided an opportunity for general discussion on the process and special factors in each borough. General points to be drawn, which may currently be outside the scope of the review, include:

• The current review and the greater transparency of the basis of allocation following the MPA’s first review have been welcomed.
• The use of the Commissioner’s discretion is a contentious element.
• The need to ensure that police officer allocations are backed up by vehicles, support staff, accommodation etc. has generated demand to widen the resources incorporated into the formula. However, it was said that this does not necessarily imply using the same indicators - such as crime statistics - to determine PCSO and police staff numbers etc.
• A longer-term basis was also suggested, particularly with reference to anticipating population flows and regeneration in specific parts of London.
• Abstractions should be made more transparent so that links with local crime statistics can be identified.
• The formula only deals with police numbers but the mix of experience and ranks within boroughs is very pertinent too.
• Three common ratios have been adopted as arguments for assessing the fairness of the allocation:
  • Police officers per number of crimes
  • Police officers per square kilometre
  • Police officers per population (day and/or night-time).
  • Concerns with an over-reliance on police overtime and volunteers persist.

Fear of crime

Across London the disproportionality between crime rates and fear of crime levels was noted, with the latter seen as incongruent with falling crime rates. Many partnerships have sought to address this through communication strategies, both internal and external focused, to bridge the gap between perceptions and actual risks. Many partnerships have enjoyed improved relationships with local media (several boroughs are tracking positive news and marketing stories in the media) but because of the nature of media, local press responsibility for the fear of crime remains an issue. Some notable community safety websites have been developed including local reporting of crime and disorder statistics, but the usefulness of websites varies widely across London.

Linkages with Criminal Justice

The links with the criminal justice system and local boards is a matter many partnerships reported as needing further attention. Closer working has developed but it was felt that this could be improved. On the new system for Crown Prosecution Service staff having a presence in charging stations, partnerships reported variable attendance levels. This was primarily based on CPS staffing availability. Benefits were noted however from the new support, namely:

• Increases in charging rates
• A reductions in no further action arrests
• Guidance to officers with evidence gathering.

Greater co-operation from courts would also be welcomed by many partnerships. Whilst acknowledging the independence of the judiciary, it was often felt that there should be closer liaison on and awareness of respective priorities.

Anti-social behaviour

The attention on anti-social behaviour appeared very high on partnership agendas. The use of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders is now quite widespread with boroughs having reasonable success rates in courts. These are costly but partnerships have found that by dealing with one or two prolific offenders, the crime rate and level of disorder drops significantly. Acceptable Behaviour Contracts are also widely being promoted. Others have also found that simple, low-cost steps such as ‘alley-gating’ can be equally effective. Most partnerships have now carried out audits and drafted anti-social behaviour strategies.

General issues

Many matters have been brought up through the meetings. Without attempting to cover all of these, the following have been raised relatively regularly:

• With regards policing issues, concerns with the slow response to attending 999 calls, answering the telephone generally, abstractions, visibility on the streets, the need for a fast-track system for dealing with disorder issues to release police time, and police station accessibility.
• Police accommodation issues, this being deemed insufficient and outmoded. Opportunities for sharing accommodation have been offered but often not taken up.
• The new licensing regime and growth in the night-time economy will have significant impacts upon all partners and resources.
• Pressure needed upon health to engage.
• Matters concerning transport safety and travelling criminals were referred to in many boroughs.
• Particular successes featured regularly included multi-agency action days, distraction burglary, enviro-crime work, alcohol exclusion zones and mobile units.

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