To explain council initiatives to promote community safety including community wardens and youth engagement.
Minutes:
Councillor Friary presented on some of the work of the Council in terms of community safety. He highlighted some of the consultations which had taken place such as the Violent Crime Consultation and the Dog Control Consultation. Cllr Friary explained some of the developments in CCTV and how the council were working with partners in the police and TfL to make CCTV coverage better. Some of the priorities of the council included, extending and developing the Street Leader Scheme, improving road safety and making town centres safer. Cllr Friary gave an overview of some of the key crime statistic in Walworth.
Cllr Friary responded to public questions which had been raised at the last Walworth meeting: Can the community wardens report broken street lights and paving stones and can community wardens issue fines to fly tippers? Cllr Friary answered that they can and do this.
Cllr Friary took questions from the floor relating to population changes and the effect on crime statistics and the presence of the community wardens on the Aylesbury estate. In response he acknowledged that regeneration did impact on crime statistics as people moved out of estates and that sometimes population decrease can increase concerns around public safety and that safety on estates such as they Heygate needed to be addressed in ways such as: increased lighting and police and wardens presence to alleviate those concerns. Cllr Friary also explained that there was an intention to move the wardens to more of a response team rather than a location based teams so that they could respond better to community safety issues as they arose.