Agenda item

Councillor Radha Burgess and Head of Community Safety & Enforcement to introduce the item to the sub-committee.

6.1  The chair stated that the women’s safety charter was a key manifesto pledge from the administration and the sub-committee is looking forward to hear what progress has be made so far, the sub-committee welcomed Jonathon Toy (Head of Community Safety), Eva Gomez (Acting Reducing Offending Manager) and Councillor Radha Burgess (Deputy Cabinet Member for Women’s Safety) to the meeting.

 

6.2  The Head of Community Safety reported that officers and Councillor Burgess had been working very hard during the summer period and were pleased that people were taking this issue seriously in this borough. There are lots of concerns that women express in terms of the daily issues they face like harassment and intimidation that affect their daily lives and never more so than at night time venues and clubs. We hear that regularly but It does not always get reported in the normal ways that you would imagine but it certainly affects them and it comes to the attention of friends and people around them and then back to officers in terms of services.

 

6.3  The Women’s Safety Charter was to go out for consultation this week and is looking to improve safety for women whether it is visiting a restaurant, cafe or a night club and getting home again. Officers were looking to those people who run or manage those venues to take some responsibility to make sure that if somebody feels threatened, harassed or intimidated they would do something active and support that person, they would also make sure their staff are trained and will make sure the person gets home safely from the venue.

 

6.4  There were far too many occasions when women did not feel safe at a venue and what was really refreshing was that officers had talked with licensees at an event last week they felt the same. They were echoing those concerns and really eager to do something about it, officers had already got 10 relatively high profile venues in different parts of the borough to adopt this charter and be a travelator for this piece of work.

 

6.5  The Head of Community Safety stated that members had a copy of the suggestions in relation to the 5 points, and suggested this to be the start of a wider campaign, officers believed that the momentum of starting with night clubs, bars and restaurants would provide a really good platform to build on and take the issues of women’s safety in Southwark very seriously.

 

6.6  The charter has gone out to consultation and will run over the next four weeks, officers are talking to a whole variety of people and are delighted to talk to the sub-committee this evening and hope you will take part in getting your views through and feeding back to officers.

 

6.7  Officers will also be seeking the views from community councils and other forums, officers would also be servicing events road shows in different parts of the borough to get a flavour of issues and concerns.

 

6.8  The chair then moved to questions from members of the sub-committee.

 

6.9  A member asked how will officers enforce the charter?

 

6.10  The Head of Community Safety reported that the venues officers were talking to are looking to have a relatively simple recording system put in place, if it is a serious incident they will report it through the normal way, if a lower level incident officers would give them contact details of officers within the team for licensing and community safety and officers would link them to the support service.

 

6.11  The Deputy Cabinet Member for Women’s Safety added that officers were also talking to venues about creating a very easy way they could list all incidents, because they do not want it to be onerous or want to undermine their ability to run their business, there are various different ways that officers can work with venues to make reporting very easy. There may be a application or a means of developing the webpage of the council to allow venues log any incidents in a really easy way so that it works for everyone.

 

6.12  The member asked a follow up question regarding the charter and the venues being able to display it to make their premises more welcoming, therefore something which is of value to them. How will officers make sure they are fore filling their end of the bargain?

 

6.13  The Head of Community Safety reported that the licensing teams already go out and do visits to licensed premises, those that adopt the charter will undertake training of staff and then do follow up visits,  those were the conversations that were taking place between officers and venues last week and that is a part of the standard approach to those venues.

 

6.14  A member asked if officers would be providing the training for those that sign up to the charter?

 

6.15  The Head of Community Safety reported that officers would like to provide businesses with a really good training tool,  that might be a dvd or/and training that would be provided by officers to the venue which would allow other businesses to attend for training. There was an appetite amongst the venues management that signed up for sharing best practice, so they were all willing to contribute to training.

 

6.16  The member added that the training and charter will relate to the staff working in the venues as well as the customers?  The officer assured members that the training did cover staff as they were also affected by incidents of violence in venues.

 

6.17  A member asked if officers had spoken to other organisations and the police and have you thought about a joined up approach to launching the charter?

 

6.18  The Head of Community Safety reported that officers had met with the police and had shared the charter with them and they were very keen on the charter. Officers are also talking to the bigger institutions as well, it would be great to promote this wider than Southwark but this borough needs to be first and best.

 

6.19  A member stated that 10 organisations had already signed up, but there were a lot of bars and clubs in Southwark, I do not know if you have a sense of proportion of businesses that have signed up, is there a pilot or do you have a strategy for businesses that do not want to sign up to the charter? Or is that something officers have not encountered?

 

6.20  The Deputy Cabinet Member for Women’s Safety reported that officers had reached out to venues that the council had good relationships with in the 3 alcohol saturation zones in the borough, which were Peckham, Camberwell and Borough & Bankside. Officers asked whether they were interested in hearing more about the initiative and received a good response from them. There are 500 venues in those zones and that will be lead by licensing officers and that will be comprehensive in terms of reaching out and getting them onboard.

 

6.21  Officers felt it would be a very powerful concept when the charter is launched and we have these high profile venues showing real leadership, there would be a good sign up effect.

 

6.22  The member followed up by asking is there a cost implication for any of these businesses, if the big businesses are doing this they may have the money for training a smaller bar with few staff and where there may be problems are there cost implications and are the council offering training?

 

6.23  The Deputy Cabinet Member for Women’s Safety reported that this came up during the meeting with venues and officers advised that the council wanted this to be as cost neutral as possible, so the council will provide training meaning minimal costs to venues.

 

6.24  The chair explained that there would be benefits to bars in terms of profits, so even if there is a small cost to implementing the charter the benefits in trade and how welcoming a venue is would more than cover the cost.

 

6.25  The Deputy Cabinet Member for Women’s Safety stated what was really encouraging was that the venues that came to meet with officers said that they understood that there was a clear cut business case, if you create a venue that is welcoming and safe to women you will get more customers, not just female customers you will get more men going there because it is a nicer environment.

 

6.26  Members were also informed that there was one representative from a very big venue who said that one of the problems that they faced was harassment and violence against women. Another problem they have to sort out was men fighting each other, so they see the women’s safety charter as being helpful in stopping men fighting each other over women.

 

6.27  A member asked is domestic violence included, If it is not why not, and how did officers come to that decision? And just to follow on to the points raised earlier how is it incentivised, would there be a website where the top ten ethical businesses were put up?

 

6.28  The officer stated that the great thing about consultation was there would be ideas about how officers can promote the charter and how to make it of interest for businesses to be involved. The officer reported that he had never attended a meeting with a group of licensees who were so enthusiastic about taking something on, he was not sure how much incentive the council would need to offer them, when what they were saying was this is a really good thing.

 

6.29  Officers have been told that things kick off in clubs over people who have been harassing women and the staff are dealing with the aftermath when the boyfriend or the group of friends who are protecting and standing up for the women who is being harassed then actually starts an argument and fight.

 

6.30  The incentive will come from their own staff who were already having to deal with these situations, and officers are hoping from the 10 venues already signed up people will advocate to other venues that this is a good thing to take on.

 

6.31  Officers have gone through the whole conversation around women’s safety and domestic abuse and the relationship, the main point to make is that  women’s safety is very important and it is something we need to get a grip with and it is great that Southwark is doing this work.

 

6.32  Domestic abuse is a much wider area and does not just affect women, officers are seeing rises in domestic abuse in terms of generational, intersex and interfamily. It is not just about the abuse of women it is about how the perpetrator is dealt with as well. There are crossovers but there are also very clear distinctions between the two, so to put them together might lose some of the distinctions around domestic abuse which officers need to get a grip of and that is why they have been kept separate.

 

6.33  A member asked if officers had set themselves a target over the next 12, 24 or 36 months in terms of the number of venues that they wish to sign up to the charter, so that officers can work towards targets?

 

6.34   The Head of Community Safety reported that officers start with 10 venues and the ambition was to get all of them and anything left out can be reviewed.  Officers anticipated a good take up. The take up could be reported back to the sub-committee after 9 months with the question of where do we go from here as a worthwhile conversation.

 

6.35   The Deputy Cabinet Member for Women’s Safety added that on the enforcement point, the strategy was to work closely with the venues to get them onboard and educated. The education piece of this work is really significant and after a certain period of time it may be possible to hard wire this commitment into licensing at some point down the line.

 

6.36  A member asked about the consultation aspect of proposals, and that officers would be providing road-shows and attending community councils. What would this achieve in terms of getting more venues to know this is a option, she pointed out there were groups in the community that could go to their local pubs and actually sell the idea to locals and get them to sign up to the charter.

 

6.37  The Head of Community Safety reported that officers can circulate the consultation, and any ideas of other venues where officers can provide  information through to as many people as possible.  Officers see it from two ways 1 need to do the work with licensed premises and also need to get it in the forefront of peoples minds, because part of the problem is a lot of cases the harassment that officers were talking about does not get dealt with or reported, people do not think anything is going to happen about it.

 

6.38  Officers feels it needs to be raised on both points in terms of residents and licensed premises and doing the two together will then encourage people to talk about this more as an issue.

 

6.39  The Deputy Cabinet Member for Women’s Safety added part of the consultation is yes it is a licensed premises it is also reaching out to all women and asking what is your experience, in terms of culture setting and  officers were trying to is say was that the council take this very seriously and were seeking to change the environment in the sense that this kind of harassment of women is unacceptable. So it is important to hear from women in the community who feel able to tell us what kind of harassment they have experienced and for us to gather that information.

 

6.40  The chair thanked officers and the Deputy Cabinet Member for Women’s Safety for attending the meeting and stated that he understood that a report would be going to the November 2014 meeting of the Cabinet and requested that officers report back to the next meeting of the sub-committee.

 

RESOLVED: That the sub-committee agreed that the Head of Community Safety & Enforcement and Councillor Radha Burgess attend the next meeting of the sub-committee on 21^st October 2014 to report back on the progress of this report.

 

  AOB

  Members agreed the following visits  from sub-committee members to the   noise team, community wardens and the repairs contractors and to report   back to the sub-committee:-

  Department  Contact    Members

Noise Team	J. Toy	Damian O’Brien Tom Flynn
Community Wardens	J. Toy	Martin Seaton Claire Maugham
Mears	Chair/David Lewis	Johnson Situ Ben Johnson
SBS	Chair/David Lewis	Tom Flynn