Minutes:
5.1 The chair invited Jonathon Toy (Head of Community Safety & Enforcement) to give a briefing on anti-social behaviour and the noise team to the sub-committee.
5.2 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement reported that he would present the noise service and anti-social behaviour separately. Members were informed that Southwark offers a fairly comprehensive noise service, which responds to about 8,000 calls per year and operates from Monday to Thursday (8.00 – 2.30 a.m.) and at the weekend the service was extended to (4.00 - 4.30 a.m.) depending on the demand for the service.
5.3 The service was adjusted according to the season, two teams operating during the winter period, and three teams during the summer period.
5.4 Members were informed that in the past officers had tended to respond to and deal with statutory noise issues and this had been a particular issue to some residents. An example given was a qualified noise officer would need to identify noise in relation to both the source and how it was affecting the person complaining about it, often this would mean attending the home/business and making sure the noise was of such a level that it affects a reasonable person. Many residents do not want someone knocking on their door, they just wanted the noise to stop and for officers to be proactive in their approach.
5.5 During the last few months when noise officers hear about a noise nuisance they spoke to the person or address causing the nuisance and asked for something to be done about it, like reducing the level of noise. This was something officers were developing as a service and would respond to residents needs.
5.6 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement stated Anti-Social Behaviour officers had been looking long and hard into the concerns of local residents. Officers had been considering how the service operates and how often issues were dealt with on a single issue basis, an example given was a licensed premise where when a nuisance was reported the licensing officer would go along and respond.
5.7 If the council were dealing with trading standards issues the trading standards officers would respond to those matters and the same with anti-social services. A good way to move forward would be to adopt a much more multi-agency approach. Anti-social behaviour was not isolated to estates or public realm areas, quite often it crosses over a number of issues and requires a much greater multi-faceted response, sometimes dealing with business, residential or freeholder premises and that was the kind of service the council now needs to be provide. Officers were working with the cabinet member about how the council could design the services to have a multi-agency response.
5.8 Members were informed that if there was one issue that still required some more work it would be the drug supply markets, not necessarily in terms of high profile business premises but particularly the open use of cannabis that was so prevalent to local residents and which officers have a lot of concerns.
5.9 The sub-committee were informed that last week there was a joint operation with the police and council in relation to an area around Lindsey Street that related to a number of drug related activities. There were a number of arrests, good work had taken place with community safety, housing, police and other services. Interestingly there were business premises involved in this activity and not only about residential issues and pressures, it was a mixture of things going on and the council needed to make the best use of resources as this may be the best approach for the future.
5.10 The chair thanked the Head of Community Safety & Enforcement for the introduction and welcomed the insight into the work going on in the department.
Noise Service
5.11 A member asked what can officers do if the person making the noise refuses to turn down the noise?
5.12 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement reported if the noise officer knocked on the door and believed there was an issue and asks the person to turn the noise down and they were to say no, the officer would then look at the statutory powers that they had and consider serving a notice or take further action of entering the premises and removing the equipment making the noise, which was a course of action that they had within their powers but would not wish to do in the first instance. There were prosecution powers available but there were a number of steps that would need to be taken in advance.
5.13 A member stated there was an example in his ward recently where bins were moved to provide access for a person with a disability, but the collection of the bins was disturbing another resident and so you have a situation of competing needs of different residents, how would such a situation be resolved?
5.14 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement reported that there were processes within the council, and an issue such as that would be dealt with in a joint approach with the cleansing team and environmental enforcement team who would undertake the work in terms of actions against bins left out at the wrong times and causing other issues. Officers would work with highways as well.
5.15 Members were informed that there was a partnership tasking group within this borough, which was a multi-agency council lead and met fortnightly meeting, which deals with a whole range of council related and police services to look at how we can respond to issues that come within our borough over a two week period.
5.16 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement stated that often it would be a multi-agency issue that arises and officers would advise that parking should do this piece of work and get housing in to do another piece of work and perhaps get the wardens to undertake some work in this area, this work would be co-ordinated through the fortnightly meeting. Officers also rely on councillors to report any issues, a good example being the Rockingham Estate where parking, noise team, police, SASBU and a range of different services were working together. The officer agreed to the members forwarding the details of this particular case to him.
5.17 A member stated that people had different noise tolerance and he had thought that officers had noise equipment to measure noise levels, but now understood that noise officers just listen, how do you measure noise levels?
5.18 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement stated noise disturbance was subjective, noise officers were qualified to a certain level and had qualifications in noise acoustics. They were trained to recognise what the level of noise was and have to base it around reasonableness of the disturbance in terms of what would affect a reasonable person.
5.19 The member stated if the noise team were called out, sometimes people have their windows open and the noise was coming from the outside, do they ask the resident to close the window so they can measure from inside or do they measure with the window open?
5.20 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement reported that they have got to base it on a level of reasonableness, there may be a number of reasons why they may feel that the noise was so loud outside, whether the windows were open or closed or whether there was a particular issue around where they may take action.
5.21 In the summer time people do open their windows and this could happen where noise levels outside are at an intolerable level. We do not want to say is that it is not statutory nuisance, we would want to say could you turn your music down as it was very loud at this moment in time.
5.22 The chair stated that both Councillor O’Brien and himself had spent time with the noise team on the night shift, and one of things that struck him was that was officers’ safety was most at risk from residents who were told that noise was not a nuisance, rather than the people making the nuisance. What do we do to protect officers in those situations and to educate residents about what their job was?
5.23 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement reported that there were a range of back office functions, the officers have to report where they are and where they are going and report back to the call centre or liaison points on their visits and where their going next, there was a constant checking process.
5.24 Members were assured that if there was an address with an issue, that gets flagged on the system and officers were alerted and warned in case there was a specific issue. Officers were trained in how to deal with particular situations and they are encouraged that if they were in confrontation they should step away, not to remain in that situation and deal with it at another time.
5.25 The officer stated that the point about officers being more at risk from the person reporting the nuisance and being told it was not an issue was interesting and he would be willing to explore more with the sub-committee. He further reported that officers were responding to people who genuinely believe there was a noise issue because of other health related problems that they face and that caused officers some real challenges.
5.26 A member asked what would you advise councillors to do with repeated reports of noise nuisance? Councillors and officers were not being believed, but if they had something in black and white based on the average noise expectation most people would respond to that positively.
5.27 The officer advised members to involve other health based professionals to help with some of these cases, officers were now looking to directly involve health professional services in cases to provide help and support.
5.28 Members were informed that officers would like to get to the point where we were very clear around the offer that officers were making, and what the expectation was at the service being providing, if there was a noise issue officers would do something about it, if other agencies are required we would involve them.
5.29 A member of the public stated that the noise from youths gathering in the stairwells was a real problem, they were sometimes persuaded to go away but would then return later on, it affects life on the estate especially with older people and some of them were very difficult to deal with and were very cheeky, this situation had been going on for the last 4 years.
5.30 The chair stated that this would be taken onboard with the anti-social behaviour discussion later on in the meeting.
5.31 The chair stated with regards to staff safety, the night he went out with the team he was aware of the flag system which keeps up on any dangerous situations they may come across. The team he was with were directed to a particular address, the call centre did not see a flag but one of the officers recognised the address and asked the call centre again, they reported again there was no flag. The officer then called their own team it was picked up that the address had been flagged as a problem address. The chair asked were there issues with the call centre?
5.32 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement reported that officers were working very closely with the call centre to improve the level of both handover and checking of information and assured members that it was improving.
5.33 One of the things that officers have been working on closely with the call centre managers was that they had an officer that controls the activity of the noise service that comes through and officers have been talking about having that officer based within the noise team, so it would be easier to have that hand over. There were systems in place and officers were moving in the right direction.
5.34 A member asked what were the service challenges that officers were facing with regards to being pro-active to increasing noise activities?
5.35 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement reported that the reason why the night time economy team was introduced to Southwark 3 years ago was recognition of the vibrant night time economy that was coming to the borough and that has been successful and developed some very good relationships with a lot of the major clubs, and we have the ability to be a lot tougher on clubs that are not managed properly.
5.36 If the Council was to going to make the best of the services we have it has got to be with the multi-agency approach as that would be the best way forward, we have got teams of skilled people that can deal with a range of issues in a vibrant night time economy concerning pubs, restaurants, clubs and bars. There are ways of managing businesses within the nightime economy, we want to encourage a vibrant and mixed business community.
5.37 A member asked can officers link particular groups of people coming from a bar or club because the council could penalise those businesses?
5.38 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement reported that officers were getting better in linking some of the clubs, bars, fast food take away and taxi ranks. Officers had a good idea about what was a well run club, effectively managed with the right level of supervision, door staff and ability to support customers as they come and go from the club. Some clubs were very large and would always provide challenges but officers would always be tough with clubs that are not managed effectively.
5.39 A member stated that he had a few issues with noise, and officers had gone around and the noise was sporadic and officers had reported back that the noise was not there, do you have any thoughts on that?
5.40 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement reported that any noise calls that come in are a priority, he would still encourage people to contact us, quite often those sporadic noise issues come back regularly, it is a matter of keep on telling us, keep a log and build up the evidence and action will be taken.
5.41 The chair stated that he had the Croydon application on his phone which measures and describes noise levels, is this a gimmick?
5.42 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement stated the reason why we hesitate to ask people to record the noise is that when it comes to evidence you can not honestly say as officers that noise came from that place at that time, it was often the qualified officers evidence that was required and that was the challenge for officers.
5.43 A member recalled discussing the call centre and integrated records in 2012, and recalled there would be flags on all records and that would take 18 months. What was causing the difficulty in integrating records of this nature, when we want to identify dwellings causing a problem? What is causing the delay and can you give us a firm time frame when the integration would take place?
5.44 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement reported that he could not give a firm time frame, there were a number of systems that needed to be looked at and they were not at the same stage in their development or quality of information. The system that the noise team used was called APP and still needs work to be done to bring it up to date then it has to be integrated. Work was being carried out through different departments.
5.45 It is a collective responsibility and ambition as a council that we have a good dialogue across the different departments with regards to the issues, we have to keep reviewing the information as an ongoing piece of work.
Anti-Social Behaviour
5.46 The chair stated that the police were stretched, how much pressure was that putting on the council in terms of the budget, are we confident of dealing with anti-social behaviour at a time when there was less police resources than in the past?
5.47 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement reported that the council had to get the very best out of partnerships that we work with, the police were facing the same financial pressures as the council. Both will have to work together and share resources, the multi-agency approach had to be the way forward and we have to look at area based issues more than single item issues, what we come across was a series of different problems that revolve around the same people who move from area to area, the focus needs to be on area based action, we need to be challenging low level crimes.
5.48 A member stated that the Borough Commander priorities were burglary and robbery even though drug abuse was important, he recognised there were two issues of tackling cannabis usage and dealing which can be more associated with gangs, was there a difference between the council and police priorities?
5.49 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement reported the police have their priorities which would be described as the MOPAC 7, which would be burglary, robbery, commercial burglary, criminal damage etc and were measured on performance in relation to those priorities. Violence with injury was discussed.
5.50 The issues on the ground that were fed to the council in relation to anti-social behaviour included drugs. The officer stated that a multi-agency approach would be the best way forward, the police and council need to combine resources to deal with those areas. Those people who are smoking cannabis on the stairwells may well be the same people involved in robberies, it needs to be dealt with on an area basis.
5.51 A member stated that he was at a ward panel meeting recently, where there was an excellent ward policing team and the sergeant reported that according to MOPAC 7 that the level of incidents had dropped by up to 40% in some cases. That did not match with what people were telling him that they were experiencing on the street, and the fear of crime was different to experiencing crime. He was interested that MOPAC 7 indicators were driving the police to re-priorities areas which were helping them to get good performance ratings but not necessarily delivering across the board to make sure our communities were safe and secure.
5.52 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement stated that the question would be better answered by the Borough Commander than himself, but reassurance was a priority for the police without any question, the reassurance figures for Southwark were high at the present. He further reported that what residents tell officers on the ground in terms of their experience was what they experience every single day and that officers need to be working closely within a multi-agency approach in order that they get the message across that crime levels robbery or burglary were going in the right direction.
5.53 A member asked when will you next meet with the Borough Commander to discuss progression towards an integrated approach of detecting both low level and serious crime within the borough?
5.54 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement reported that he had a conversation with the Borough Commander this morning and met with the Superintendant last Friday and reached an agreement to join some services together and would hope that over the next 6 to 12 months that would be a fully integrated process.
5.55 A member stated that an area which had not been discussed this evening was CCTV.
5.56 Councillor Situ reported that last week there was a massive joint operation by the council and the police services in the Bermondsey area which resulted in 13 individuals being arrested for drugs dealing, anti-social behaviour and significant crimes which had affected the area. Without the four months of joint operation from both the council and police we would not have got to that position. The sub-committee were assured that serious drugs dealings was still on the police radar, which was an important issue which our residents were raising on estates.
5.57 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement stated CCTV was a very effective tool. We would want to measure the outcome in terms of the recordings and how many of those recorded crime incidents do we turn into arrests. That figure was going up all the time, officers were seeing a 20% increase and being commended by the police team in terms of the level of input we have had.
5.58 The Head of Community Safety & Enforcement welcomed members and co-opted members of the sub-committee to visit the new CCTV screens to see the effectiveness of the system.
RESOLVED: That members of the sub-committee arrange a date and time to view the CCTV system with the Head of Community Safety & Enforcement. The following councillors stated that they wished to be included on the visit, Councillors Tom Flynn, Ben Johnson, Johnson Situ and Martin Seaton