Policing town centres safely

Report: 11
Date: 7 May 2009
By: T/Assistant Commissioner Rose Fitzpatrick on behalf of the Commissioner

Summary

This report sets out the delivery of a new approach to policing Town Centres including criteria for selecting locations, engagement plans, accommodation and Implementation plan, It also includes:

• The community/partner engagement strategy for identifying the first sixteen town centre footprints.
• Details of how the Special Constabulary will form part of these teams
• An implementation plan for the 32 Town Centre Teams over the next two years.

A. Recommendation

That members note the report.

B. Supporting information

The Presence Strand

1. The Commissioner has announced the five Ps as a way of working underpinning his time in office – Presence, Performance, Productivity, Professionalism and Pride. They reflect the underlying culture of the Service needed to support our agreed priorities of confidence, safety and improvement.

2. The Presence strand is being developed in terms of improvements in how our staff patrol, emphasising how we lead and supervise to ensure they are focussed on doing the right things, in the right way in the right places, and how we can increase visibility, capacity and capability to increase the ‘Governance of the Streets’ by dealing with anti social behaviour (ASB) and street crime. The work, which will apply to all business groups, will be developed by a Presence Programme Board, directly supporting the work on the confidence in policing measure. It will focus activity on issues of local concern, ASB on the streets, and enhance confidence through greater visibility dealing with the issues of concern to local communities.

3. The initiative will lead to enhanced visibility; including a greater physical presence and connectivity between processes and resources with communities more engaged. The tactics and resources will use the Safer Neighbourhoods model of policing and work with support from all business groups. Experience has shown that under Blunt 2 and Spotlight the MPS can respond to short-term goals. ‘Presence’ will identify those activities that are sustainable and have maximum effect. This will require a NIM process for ongoing deployments of corporate and BOCU asset to issues to provide increased visibility to the public through a focus on Town Centres, schools and after school locations.

The Policing Pledge – our promises to the public

4. The Citizen Focus Policing Programme has launched the Metropolitan Police Service Policing Pledge: Our Promise to the Public. The Pledge meets all the requirements of the national policing pledge and details the levels of service, which people can expect from the MPS.

5. The Pledge has given a blueprint for delivering specific elements of policing and the ‘Presence’ initiative will complement the drive in making London Safer. This is particularly relevant to the way in which we propose to police Town Centres.

6. There will be three approaches to the work:

• Immediate improvements that can be made by focus on the basics
• Uplift of parts of current service improvement programmes which would support PRESENCE
• New programmes of work to increase the public perceptions of presence of staff, e.g. Policing Town Centres.
  
• This work is being developed in accordance with our agreed budget and decision making processes.

What is a Town Centre?

7. Town Centres mean a lot of different things to people. Some are the centres for shopping and commerce others are entertainment centres with pub, restaurants, clubs and cinemas. Whatever definitions are used they are key areas for people, where perceptions of safety and observation of ASB and signal crimes impact on peoples’ lives.

8. In London there are a large number of town centres, some small rows of shops other major shopping centres; all of them are significant places for local communities and for the prosperity of the capital. There are already in place a wide range of policing initiatives, however there has not been a pan London Strategy for policing them and this new approach is intended to enhance provision of services in these areas, reduce crime and disorder and increase people’s perceptions of safety.

Current provision

9. Every part of London is covered by a Safer Neighbourhoods Team (SNT), which consists of at least one sergeant, two constables and three PCSOs. These teams are required to engage with their local communities and agree the priorities that matter most locally. Part of SNTs are the Safer School Partnership officers which comprise about 230 PCs and about 100 PCSOs who are using neighbourhood policing approaches to school communities.

10. In addition to these teams there are 32 Safer Transport Teams that cover the London area consisting of at least one inspector, three sergeants and 21 PCSOs. From January we have started to roll out 32 Transport hub teams consisting of one sergeant, one constable and seven PCSOs.

11. The Employer Supportive Policing (ESP) of the MSC has Shop Watch schemes and Borough Beat schemes providing 583 officers to Town Centres. The MSC also has about 100 officers attached to the OSU who are deployed directly to Town Centres on Friday/Saturday nights. See Appendix 4 for current Shop Watch Locations.

12. Each BOCU also have a licensing team whose responsibility is to work with partners, particularly the local authority, to enforce licensing legislation to reduce crime and violence. There are also a range of other partnership arrangements including joint working and teams funded by Local Authorities.

13. Building on existing provision, the MPS will now:

• Provide new models for decisions about front counters – increasing accessibility and adding a rationale to move from our current position
• Provide greater visibility by ensuring that there are significant resources addressing signal crimes in highly visible locations
• Provide an approach which will deal with ASB in locations where it has a specific impact on communities
• Support Retailers during these difficult financial times, e.g. tackling their crime/ASB issues through effective engagement and enforcement activity.
• Increase the robustness of our approach to policing night time economy
  
• Improve community confidence by addressing issues of local importance
  

Defining Town Centres

14. In defining town centres we need to consider the needs of:

• Retail
• Commercial
  
• Entertainment and leisure
• Other business types/locations
• Resident population

15. A corporate approach to policing Town Centres will be introduced on every BOCU. BOCUs have undergone a process of identifying all town centre locations, through engagement with local business partners, CDRPs and the wider community.

16. As part of the identification process, boroughs were asked to tier their Town Centres in the following way;

• Primary Town centre (e.g. traditional town centre, shopping mall, retail park)
• Secondary shopping/business area (e.g. local shopping parade)
• Tertiary shopping/business area (e.g. Industrial units, isolated business)
  

17. This process also identified Town Centre footprints. These footprints were used to provide crime/CAD data to determine those areas, which have the most pressing need for increased, police intervention. This process has helped to identify a potential further tier, ‘Priority’ Primary Town centres. BOCUs were then asked to consult with their local partners to confirm the ‘Priority’ Primary Town Centre on each borough.

Town Centre Strategy

18. It is intended to reduce anti-social behaviour, crime and disorder within Town Centres by increasing police visibility, accessibility and familiarity. To do this the MPS will:

• Use the learning from the Neighbourhood Policing programme, the Retail Engagement Project and the Business Policing Model Project (City of London/MPS joint initiative) to develop a Town Centre approach to reassurance policing.
• Classify town centres according to the size, type of centre and policing risks associated with them e.g. primary, secondary etc.
• In partnership with the community and businesses identify the footprint of 32 Primary town centres across London
• Set a standard minimum policing resource for each identified Town Centre
  
• Roll out 32 Town Centre Teams over two years. One to each of the ‘Priority’ Primary Town Centres. See appendix 1 for the details of all ‘Priority’ Primary Town Centres
  
• Enhance Shop Watch ESP and generic MSC services around these locations – setting target strengths for numbers of officers and hours of deployment
• Work closely with existing Partnerships and Town Centre Managers already present in these locations.
  
• Create KIN and Town Centre Panels (or to develop/enhance existing structures e.g. Business Improvement Districts) to support a problem solving approach to dealing with issues.
• Embed that within other policing approaches such as SNT, Safer Transport Teams (STT), Safer Schools Partnerships (SSP) and Shop watch
• Integrate licensing approaches by BOCU and local authority staff within the Town Centre policing approach
  
• Integrate Town Centre Key Individual Networks (KINS) with ward KINS
  
• Develop young people strategies for each town centre

19. Where there is a limited evening/night time economy, team coverage sixteen hours per day may suffice and a purely commercial/retail area operating usual working hours may be well served by team that works on an eight hour basis. These teams may well follow the traditional 1:2:3 Safer Neighbourhood (SN) model, but some large areas may require an enhanced team structure. The linking in with existing neighbourhood teams, Safer Transport Teams and Hub Teams must also be accounted for. Appendix 3 for Transport Hub Team Locations.

20. A review of safer neighbourhood team shift patterns will also be necessary to ensure that team deployments meet the needs of town centre demands (for instance ensuring that where adjoining teams cover a town centre that parade times are staggered to provide the greatest possible coverage).

Safer Neighbourhoods Model

21. Town centre teams will work to the Safer Neighbourhoods 7 stage model. An initial KIN survey will include a map of the area so that individuals can define the area that they believe represents the town centre footprint.

22. To ensure that we achieve a consistent approach across London we will undertake a series of briefings to:

• Bring Town Centre team and Town Centre Management together
• Initiate a problem solving process
• Workshop formally agreeing the town centre footprint
• Share best practice

Governance

23. This will be an SNT programme of work and will be led by Commander, Neighbourhood Policing, Territorial Policing (TP).

Communication and Supervision

24. Each town centre must have its own:

• Communication strategy
• WEB page
• Local meeting structure
  
• Programme of street briefings

25. Through its engagement strategy and the grading of the town centre, the expectation will be that the team would support as appropriate:

• Business Improvement District (BID) Initiatives
• Safer Business Area
• Business watch
• Development of Town Centre Key Individual Networks

Extended Police Family

26. A Safer Town Centres approach will include the recruitment of a large numbers of MSC officers. We are looking for 50 MSC Officers to be attached to each ‘Priority’ Primary town centre. They will be deployed to areas of high demand in order to provide high visibility where experience of ASB in particular, can undermine wider feelings of security.

27. It will be particularly important to promote the offer to Local Authorities for the purchasing of additional resource, in particular looking at where partnership gains in Town Centres could achieve LAA targets and other priorities. Central Safer Neighbourhoods Unit will be providing information to Boroughs over the next few weeks.

Implementation and timeline for Town Centres Teams

28. The work will progress in a number of phases to bring about quick change and then to develop the underpinning work.

• Phase 1 – By 31 March 2009 – In place.
• Phase 2 – By 31 May 2009
• Phase 3 – Sept 2009 - 2010

Phase 1 – 31 March 2009

29. As part of the Presence work we have set out the agenda and expected changes across the MPS. The focus of TP and CO activity has been to promote BOCUs consideration in how they can release additional asset to support other work, make the maximum use of what they have and ensure our staff see us working differently. It has included:

• Corporate Briefing (delivered through MetBats to every officer at the start of their duty)
• Focus on dress and equipment - connected to PRIDE
• Daily briefing on the issues which make an impact; how officers will are to be more visible in the areas where street governance is an issue, what SNTs are doing about those issues, what other assets are being deployed
• Apart from where risk assessment indicates otherwise, an expectation that officers will patrol on their own, will speak with the public and will engage people to explain what they are posted to deal with.
• All BOCUs having identified a ‘Priority’ Primary Town Centre location are deploying an additional 4 officers a day to these locations.
• All BOCU Senior Management Teams (SMTs) have been briefed on expectations of leadership on this matter, including minimum on duty senior officer cover (24/7), intrusive supervision approaches to support the work, approaches to release asset to support the activity including robust risk assessment and a performance management framework.

30. From 1 April 2009, each borough is required to provide a monthly return on activity undertaken within their Town Centre. The first return will be available week commencing 5 May 2009. Prior to receipt of the first Borough returns, all boroughs have confirmed that these additional four patrols are taking place. In addition:

• All 32 BOCUs are providing additional patrols as instructed.
• Local Cluster Inspectors in charge to oversee delivery
• Probationary officers (IPLDP) deployed to Town Centres
  
• MSC officers also being deployed
  
• Tasking of officers being monitored through the MetBats System and reviewed at Daily Management Meetings.
  
• Local Briefings with CDRPs and existing Town Centre Management Groups taking place.
  
• Identification of Key Individual Networks underway.
  
• Street Briefings taking place.
  
• Range of enforcement activity includes, arrests, FPN/PNDs, management of designated public place orders (DPPOs) (sometimes called alcohol control areas or zones).

Phase 2 – By 31 May 2009

31. This will be a phased role out of a coordinated uplift of activity. It will be implemented on four BOCUs at a time starting with City of Westminster, Brent, Haringey and Southwark. In addition to the approaches above, it will include:

• Direction of Operation Sphere resources to support activity
• Creation of a Town Centre support team (two sergeants and one constable) growth plus additional asset from the BOCU, approaches to the Local Authority for purchase of match funded resources, identification of premises from which front counter services will be delivered in the future, direction of MSC staff to provide 7 day a week support.
• Implementation of Town Centre policing strategies to all Town Centres, including new KIN arrangements for SNTs, greater focus on Inspectors roles to ensure coverage across neighbourhoods on a 16/7 basis, ensuring priorities reflect the importance of street governance in places of high density populations, communication strategies, problem solving profiles in place.
• Introduction of new CCC – IBO protocols to assist with demand management and response activity allowing release of resources to patrol.
• Introduction of Automated Person Location System (APLS) to provide supervisors real time clarity on where patrols are, what staff are doing and allow for greater support to getting officers to the places of need
• Through the work above: a requirement to find an additional 10 officers a day for deployment to Town Centres. This must be additional asset from savings made locally and can include additional patrols from MSC officers in addition to what they would normally do.
• Daily Street briefings in Town Centres, creation of Town Centre Panels, work with local authorities on brigading of Town Centre resources, implementation of learning from Business Policing Model (SNT).

32. For 2009/10 and working to the principles set out in paragraph 31 above, we will roll out an additional four BOCUs at time, as follows:

• 31 August 2009
• 31 October 2009
• 31 December 2009
  
• The remaining 16 BOCUs will be rolled out during 2010/11
  

Performance Framework

33. Performance will be addressed in a framework that will include outputs and outcomes that will ultimately deliver an increase in confidence. There will be a Borough SMT lead that will have overall responsibility to ensure that resources are in place and tasked correctly.

34. Part of the monitoring and review process will require feedback. It is proposed to extend the current design of engaging with KINs who currently give feedback on the wards they reside to take into account their perceptions of where they travel, shop, work or go to school to gain a greater understanding of the fabric of other communities such as town centres, or transport thoroughfares.

Outputs

35. Presence will have a number of output indicators and subsequent analysis will provide managers with information to make decisions where to place resources to gain the most effectiveness. These will include the following activities:

• Numbers of patrols in identified areas
• MSC recruited
  
• Increase in Public Meetings/Street Briefings etc
  
• PSPs for each identified location
• Increased visibility measured through PAS
• Reductions in ASB calls to locations
• Town Centre Panels
  
• School Panels
• Number of ASBOs, ABCs, PNDs, FPNs issued
  
• Additional officers purchased
  
• Newsletters

36. Each Town Centre will complete a monthly return (based upon the Safer Neighbourhoods EPIC return). The Central Safer Neighbourhoods Unit will provide a monthly high-level performance report for TP and when appropriate, to MPS Performance Board.

37. We are currently scoping adding appropriate questions to the Public Attitude Survey in order to measure community confidence at MPS & BOCU level.

C. Legal implications

1. The proposals contained in the report support the MPS’s pledge for the coming years, and have been developed by consulting, pooling experience, knowledge and skills from partner bodies. Increasing Town Centres policing which is shaped by effective partnership with local communities will lead to building public confidence and reduce the fear of crime and concern about anti-social behaviour in priority areas. The proposals also aim to deliver on priorities that are set out in the Policing Plan and CDRP strategies.

2. Significant changes impacting on the Estates Strategy will need to be presented to the relevant Committee for approval

D. Race and equality impact

There are considerable opportunities for enhancing community and race relations through this approach. A full equalities impact assessment will be developed by Safer Town Centres to establish how this approach can best enhance community relations.

E. Financial implications

1. The proposals in this paper primarily relate to the realignment of existing resources within the approved budget. Additional resources to support the borough-based initiatives could become available from:

• the planned growth of the Metropolitan Special Constabulary (MSC) as outlined in the 2009-12 Policing London Business Plan and Budget. Details of this programme are currently being developed
• local negotiation with London boroughs for resources to support LAA and other priorities

2. Any growth to support the Presence Agenda will be subject to the normal MPA/MPS decision making and budget processes.

F. Background papers

None

G. Contact details

Report author: Chief Inspector Gary Fryer - TP HQ Safer Neighbourhoods Unit, MPS.

For information contact:

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

Appendix 1

 BOCU locations for Transport Hub Teams

Appendix 2

 BOCU Locations for ‘Priority’ Primary Town Centre locations

Appendix 3

 Current Town Centre Teams

Appendix 4

Active ESP ShopWatch sites across the MPS

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