Agenda item

6.1  The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement introduced the report to members and stated officers were focused on community safety priorities over the next six to twelve months as officers worked in partnership with other department and agencies.

 

6.2  The first part of the report was to the sub-committee a understanding of where our partners/agencies are at this moment in time. It was important to understand that whilst the council continues through its own changes our partner organisations are going through similar changes and in some cases even bigger changes than the council are going through.

 

6.3  In terms of Southwark Police and the met as a whole they are seeing significant changes to their structures and how they organise and operate.  Officers have had some particular pressures locally and there have been big changes in the police senior management team and further changes in terms of Inspectors and Chief Inspectors.

 

6.4  The analytical capacity that the council previously had no longer exists and the reason this has been highlighted in this report is when officers are looking at local intelligence and trying build a picture of what is happening over a period of time that is no longer done in Southwark. That work is now done in a regional centre which covers 6 to 7 different boroughs and both the council and police are reliant on the quality of the analytical products that comes through and we are often driven by good researched intelligence.

 

6.5  The agency going through the biggest changes are the probation service, the service in effect is being split into two different functions. In future they will look at high risk cases, those that have a significant risk of the offender may have gone into custody for some considerable period of time and may have a high tariff custodial offence that is the group of people they will be looking after.

 

6.6  Those that are low to medium risk will now be looked after through a community Rehabilitation Company and that will be a tendered company in each of the probation areas across the whole of England and Wales. There will be one area for London and that company will look after the management of low risk offenders. Quite often they are the people who commit the largest amount of crimes although it is considered low tariff offences. So things like shoplifting, theft from a person without any form of violence and theft from a motor vehicle, so crimes that really affect local residents so there is going to be quite a change to how those offenders are looked after in the future.

 

6.7  The Fire Brigade is also going through considerable changes, last year the council collectively took a very robust stance to the closure of Southwark Fire Station and the loss of tender at Peckham, we lost 50 fire fighters in this borough, this causes significant problems, particularly around the issue of familiarisation that is the ability for local fire fighters to understand the area/patches/blocks that they are visiting and looking after, this continues to cause concerns on a partnership level.

 

6.8  Domestic abuse is a very big area for officers and fits into the scheme of setting in terms of violent crimes agenda. In Southwark there are high levels of domestic abuse officers have recorded somewhere in the region of 2,200 incidents a year on average. There are a lot of services that officers put into place in terms of domestic abuse. The sub-committee may wish to refer back to the report that this sub-committee produced last year in terms of domestic abuse and the recommendations it provided. Officers are aware that there is likely to be a new domestic abuse bill coming through government at some stage in the not too distant future. There is still a considerable amount of work to be undertaken with regards to the whole issue of violence against women and the wider premises of that work area.

 

6.9  Anti-social behaviour is a very big issues for residents and officers in the borough,  most of officers post consists of complaints of anti-social behaviour affecting residents on estates and this will remain a big priority over the 6 to 12 months. Members were informed that there will be new legislation the anti-social behaviour policing act which will become active in the autumn of 2014, it changes the landscape in terms of how anti-social behaviour and those powers are used.

 

6.10  The sub-committee were informed that violent crimes has been a long standing issue, unfortunately for many of our local communities they have been seriously affected by the stigma of violence and that has had a big impact on them.

 

6.11  Over the last few years officers have seen a 29% reduction of  violence with injury, 51% reduction in gun crime and 43% reduction in knife crime, those figures do not come through anything less than a lot of hard work across the board by all agencies over a long period of time.

 

6.12  Members were informed that support to victims of crime was very important and there was a big change in terms of how victims services are being delivered across London and officers would not want to lose focus that support to victims is still paramount. Officer want victims in Southwark to receive the best possible support.

 

6.13  The chair thanked the Head of Community Safety & Enforcement and opened the questions section of the meeting.

 

6.14  A member of the sub-committee asked a question about people who use a different range of services across the council, a victim of domestic violence  for example might also be a family with dependencies issues that exist within that family/community. How are you working with other departments across the council to bring it all together and deal with the whole range of issues, rather than one at a time?

 

6.15  The work officers do with any of the services is just as much in collaboration with those partner agencies, so picking up on your example officers would undertake that work through the troubled families team, we have substance misuse providers that officers work alongside and the way that officers work is like a team around the family and it may be picked up and lead by one particular agency. The council has a Domestic Violence Service which actually provides a whole range of different support for the individual and the wider family.

 

6.16  A member asked how do community wardens fit into community safety or are they entirely focused on environmental issues?

 

6.17  The officer reported community wardens are not entirely focused on environmental issues, officers provide quite a range of services through the wardens and again it would depend on the kind of issue and pressure happening at certain time of the year or events coming up.

 

6.18  Officers are really proud of the work of wardens including aspects such as working with the most vulnerable residents, when there are bad spells of weather, be it hot or cold quite often the social services team will call on the wardens to do visits in certain areas and it is a job they really enjoy doing. They also do a lot of work in terms of trying to support the more vulnerable members of the communities into services.

 

6.19  A member asked about ranking which were produced by the statistical unit which ranks the numbers of incidents and ranks them across London or our neighbours? The officer report the figures in the report were ranked across London.

 

6.20  The member asked about our statistical neighbours in that case, in both stats here the changes in recorded crime by crime types, I knowledge those figures but I am told that crime across the country has been significantly reduced, I do not know if these figures are for the London condition or our statistical neighbours. Are you able to tell us that?

 

6.21  The officer stated he could not tell you every one, officers can probably pull out the information, in term of percentage reductions on the serious end of violence agenda, and Southwark pretty much out performs anybody in the country.

 

6.22  The GLA had produced their anti-gangs strategy if members look to the map that they produced in that strategy you would see 2011-12 that Southwark is green showing there are lots of issues in terms of serious gang related violence, it is now clear.

 

6.23  The officer reported that he had worked with Professor David Kennedy who had come over from America and he talked about percentage figures in terms of the work he had done in Boston, LA and Baltimore our figures compared or bettered those cities in terms of our reductions.

 

6.24  *The officer undertook to send the links to these papers to members of the sub-committee.

 

6.25  * The officer undertook to provide a briefing paper on serious violence.

 

6.26  A member asked about noise complaint, what will this review look like? What ideas are going to be put forward? The residents’ experience of making noise complaints is they are reluctant to do so because of the requirement for officers to come to their property before addressing the source of the noise, and it does not feel like a common sense approach when there is a big noise in the small hours of the morning. How might that experience be different after the review?

 

6.27  The officer reported that the noise team have been discussing these points, if officers respond to a noise nuisance there are two ways of looking at it, from a statutory noise nuisance point of view and that requires officers to do certain things to meet with the legislation and that does not always suit people. Officers are trying to work through collectively as a team is see whether or not a response that can be provided if not that night to meet the statutory requirements then certainly to support the residents the day after to make sure they get the level of support and something can be done about the people who have caused that nuisance, in a way that resolves that issue.

 

6.28  A member asked if the noise team operated all night? Or is there a cut off point? The officer reported that at this moment in time there is a cut off point,  so Monday to Thursday the services ends at 3.30 a.m., and weekends the service operates until 4.30 a.m.

 

6.29  The officer informed members that there was a conversation ongoing  regarding, are the hours right, have officers got the level of seasonality right, do officers need to shift some of the coverage, do we need the level of daytime service or is there another way officers can deliver that in a way that actually provides a case management services to cover the points that you raised.

 

6.30  There are also other pressures particularly with the elderly and mental health that in itself is causing officers some challenges and trying to design service that is sensitive to these issues and in terms of mental health related issues such as Alzheimer’s and dementia, these are areas that officers need to be careful about dealing with regards to complaints because these issues are more common now than a few years ago.

 

6.31  The chair asked a question regarding fire station closures and asked whether officers held figures on this information on twitter about instances that happen about the promises that the Mayor gave on response times and on where fire engines were coming from in London, are we collecting information as a borough on where we are being let down as a result of those closures so that we can use as ammunition in the future maybe to see some of that come back?

 

6.32  The officer stated that information could be provided for members,  Southwark’s point of view was that the measurement used in terms of a two tendered response was not sufficient from Southwark’s point of view. Many of the fires in this borough requires more than a two tendered response, it usually requires a three tendered response and sometimes more and our argument collectively as a council was the vulnerability of our blokes and residents, we need a measure of a three tendered response.

 

6.33  Officers were trying to gather evidence in terms of both two and three tender, because anything which is over six stories or more requires three tenders. What happens is the crew will arrive and will then wait for the right level of support before they will go and deal with the fire, so officers can extract figures which will give the sub-committee an indication of response times.

 

6.34  A member asked a question regarding counter terrorism and perhaps the council playing a bigger role, and also to what extent is that affected by the current reorganisation of the police and fire services?

 

6.35  The officer reported that the police would like to see councils to taking on a much greater role in terms of the prevention agenda, that might mean how the council manage those people who they deem as a risk of terrorism, or taking a stronger role in terms of building an infrastructure which increases the safety of our more iconic buildings and historic locations and both of those would be a challenge to officers.

 

6.36  The officer explained that there are areas which would need to be explored with the police and fire services, but there is a need to be clear that there is a level of expertise which the council would need from policing point of view before officers would say that the council were in the right ability to take on those kind of roles. Specialist skills are required to provide that level of service that they are talking around the council would probably need to bring in specialist services to provide that service.

 

6.37  A member asked a question regarding under reporting of certain hate crimes, such as domestic violence, male on female and same sex, have you noticed any change in Southwark’s figures, a while ago we had quite a high profile publicity campaign on this subject and I wonder if there are any thoughts of repeating that or do you think it necessary?

 

6.38  The officer reported that there was a strong view that anything the council can do to encourage or to make the community feel safer and report even the most minor incidents is really important, this gives officers a better understanding of what was actually is going on in the community. It was wider than hate crime it also extends to the issue of women’s safety as well, there is a whole range of things which are valuable for officers to encourage that level of input.

 

6.39  Hate crime figures have not particularly gone up considerably over the last couple of years, they are still low but there is still an awful lot that goes on out there in the borough that people seem to believe is daily life, so there are things that can be done to encourage addressing these problems.

 

6.40  The chair thanked the officers for the report and answering members’ questions and with the sub-committee’s agreement took a 5 minute break. The meeting will commence at 20.10 p.m.