Agenda item

To consider the report on a review of Community Safety issues for Spelthorne Borough Council during the period 2016-2017.

The Committee will also be pleased to hear from Surrey Police and the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) on community safety matters. There will be an opportunity after each presentation to ask questions.

The Community Safety Manager gave an update on Community Safety issues over the past year. He detailed the performance data for the period April 2016 to March 2017 for the key priorities for the Community Safety Team: house burglary, vehicle crime, violence with injury and anti-social behaviour. During the period there was an increase of 8.1% in reported crime. He also highlighted the success of the Joint Enforcement Team (JET) which had dealt with high levels of enforcement issues particularly around fly tipping and abandoned vehicles.

He outlined the Community Safety activities that had been delivered with partner agencies including: Junior and Senior Citizen events, Partnership Action Days, development of a water safety strategy, launch of a High Impact Complex Drinkers pilot and the acquisition of portable CCTV equipment to address reports of fly tipping and low level antisocial behaviour at any location in the Borough.

The Community Safety Manager gave an update on the Neighbourhood Team which met on a six weekly basis with the Community Safety Team and the Joint Enforcement Team to discuss incidents of fly tipping and antisocial behaviour amongst other things.

The Surrey Chief Constable had identified Spelthorne as the leading Borough within a new area of partnership working to disrupt serious organised crime. He reported that Surrey Police had carried out a public confidence survey in August 2017, which showed a confidence level in Spelthorne of 94% - a 16.1% increase on the 4^th quarter of 2016/17.  

Members of the Committee asked questions in relation to the increase in recorded crime and significantly for serious sexual crime; the absence of modern day slavery from the report and the police responsibility for Traveller incursions.

Inspector Sproston of Surrey Police explained the reasons for the rise in reported crime, which were consistent with the picture nationally: that in addition to more reports being made of child sexual exploitation and domestic violence, changes to Home Office accounting rules had meant incidents that would not have been recorded as a crime in the past were now classified as such. This had a major impact on the statistics but would plateau in future years as the new recording method became embedded.

He praised Spelthorne for being ahead of the game in relation to its active investigation of serious organised crime including modern day slavery (MDS); it was the only borough in the Surrey Police force working with partners on an audit of serious organised crime and had been identified as a template for best practice. However, he stressed that community feedback was essential to remedy MDS.

Members thanked the Police for their community based handling of the national security operations over the previous weekend on behalf of affected residents. 

David Munro, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Surrey, gave an overview of the successes of his first year in office and the challenges he was working to address, as follows:

Done well:

·         Support for vulnerable people - great improvements had been made since Her Majesty’s Inspectorateof Constabulary (HMIC) graded the service inadequate a year ago but it was now ‘good’, a jump of two steps.

·         Response times for the 101 non-emergency number were far quicker than a year ago with the result that the dropout rate was dramatically reduced

·         Joint Enforcement Teams (JET) had been a great success

·         Community Safety and victim grants – fund increased to £750k. Any projects needing funding on crime or prevention of can be applied for online on the funding hub.

·         Volunteers – Drive to help more people to volunteer as Specials, cadets and neighbourhood watch co-ordinators

Need more work but some solid achievement:

·         Policing In Your Neighbourhood - Basic model was sound with some real advantages - less money, more officers for serious incidents who are better trained with less specialisation; down side is not so many walking down the high street. Recruited more officers and training underway to bring up to establishment.

·         Recorded Crime - had gone up partly due to change in method of reporting but also incidents have increased. Commissioned special piece of work to discover crime by crime what the reasons are for the increase.

·         Neighbourhood Watch – been radically reorganised. Now an online system.

·         Community engagement - satisfaction confidence rating with Surrey Police was high but not taken for granted.

·         Collaboration – achieved better relations with all borough councils.

·         Criminal justice system – victims used to be treated badly particularly where serious sexual offences involved. Statistics show this is improving with victims being made top priority and dealt with speedily

Challenges

·         Work on retention of experienced police officers - Good at recruiting high grade officers less good at retaining

·         Travellers – Excellent work being done on the ground but undertaken an urgent review to be slicker and more forceful within the law to serve communities better. Needs to be a concerted effort to identify transit sites

·         ICT - looking for transformation in operational emergency communications

·         Funding - 1% pay rise confirmed and the same as a bonus, which has to be found out of the Police budget. It means they are not able to do everything they want to but will do the best they can.

Members acknowledged and applauded the successes and that work was ongoing in other areas.

Resolved to:

1.         note the report on Community Safety for 2016-2017 and the work of          the Police and Crime Commissioner and

2.         thank the police for their handling of the national security operations in     Sunbury and Stanwell over the past weekend.