Agenda Item 13
NNDC – Future Arrangements for Community Safety
Our approach to and role in community safety has been changing for some while
and continues to do so. In common with other low-crime rural areas, whilst the
key objectives of driving out crime and tackling anti-social behaviour remain a
priority, the partnership style of working amongst agencies allocated a statutory
role through the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act has led to significant
mainstreaming within services such as housing and environment health and to a
problem solving approach, tackling issues often raised through community
engagement as local projects. The role of the Community Safety specialist is as
much about ensuring that service managers are aware of their responsibilities as
it is about direct intervention. That process has raised awareness and helped
individual staff to understand how they can contribute to tackling problems
through multi-agency working. Consequently, community safety as a separately
identifiable service has migrated to become a cross-cutting theme with a broad
base of shared responsibility.
The current context and status of community safety in North Norfolk is as follows:
•
Norfolk Councils, the Police and other key agencies have agreed to
replace the existing structure of seven district based community safety
partnerships with a single partnership for Norfolk. We are currently
awaiting final Home Office approval to enable the district partnerships
(established by the 1998 Act) to merge into a single strategic countywide
body although the new operational arrangements are already in place.
•
Members of the North Norfolk Community Safety Partnership are meeting
on 1 February to confirm that they will continue to meet from time to time
on an informal basis to review performance and share organisational
information.
•
The formal requirement of the Scrutiny Committee to monitor crime and
disorder will change in the absence of a district County Strategic
Partnership. Members will need to decide what continuing role the
Committee might play.
•
Roles and responsibilities of key partners have crystallised, with the Police
focussed on the more serious crime end of the community safety spectrum
and all relevant agencies contributing to lower-level problem solving and
tackling anti-social behaviour (ASB) through the anti-social behaviour
action group (ASBAG).
•
The involvement of local communities and residents is now much greater
following the introduction of Safer Neighbourhood Teams, creating far
more opportunity for community-led solutions and the accurate profiling of
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the district in the context of crime, ASB and fear of crime, all of which
influence the overall level of community wellbeing.
Against this backdrop, our future input to community safety will comprise the
following strands:
(a) Resource support for anti-social behaviour through the multi-agency
operational team located in Cromer Police Station. This is likely to be in
the form of a financial contribution towards a jointly funded post to be
hosted by Victory Housing Trust to work alongside the Victory Housing
Trust ASB Manager.
(b) Mainstreamed operational service input to problem solving and tackling
ASB through the ASBAG and individual projects.
(c) Councillor and officer attendance at the ASBAG.
(d) Management of the CCTV operation through Property Services.
(e) CMT/SMT ownership of our duties under Section 17 of the Crime and
Disorder Act (having regard for the impact on crime and disorder
outcomes of what we do, including service design and delivery, policy
development and implementation, and decision making in our regulatory
functions, eg licensing and planning.
(f)
Informal regular liaison between members of the existing district
community safety partnership.
(g) Ongoing monitoring of district crime statistics (provided by the Police)
through the Council’s performance framework.
(h) Crime and disorder monitoring and assessment by the Scrutiny
Committee.
(i)
Crime and anti-social behaviour to be included in the Community
Strategy and to feature in whole settlement locality projects and
community planning exercises.
(j)
Membership of the Norfolk County Community Safety Partnership to
create a link between countywide strategy and local operational activity.
This approach places community safety at strategic, management and
operational levels, is based upon mainstreaming responsibilities within service
delivery, and provides a specific focus on tackling anti-social behaviour. It
reinforces the shift from specialism to generic and reflects how ongoing
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partnership working has largely transformed how we contribute, from being the
exception to being the norm.