Agenda and minutes

Venue: Committee Room 1 - Wallasey Town Hall

Contact: Lyndzay Roberts 

Items
No. Item

24.

Members' Code of Conduct - Declarations of Interest / Party Whip

Members are asked to consider whether they have any disclosable pecuniary interests and/or any other relevant interest in connection with any item(s) on this agenda and, if so, to declare them and state the nature of the interest.

 

Members are reminded that they should also declare whether they are subject to a party whip in connection with any item(s) to be considered and, if so, to declare it and state the nature of the whipping arrangement.

Minutes:

No such declarations were made.

 

25.

Community Patrol Services pdf icon PDF 344 KB

This report is in response to a requisition by three Members of the Committee for a Special meeting to discuss the Council’s Community Patrol Service. 

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting and outlined the procedure to be adopted in respect of the matter under consideration, reading out the requisition notice for the benefit of those members of the public in attendance.

 

The Managing Director for Delivery introduced his report that had been prepared in response to Members’ enquiry into an allegation that the Council’s Community Patrol service had undertaken security checks at private premises. The report also provided information on the roles and duties of the Community Patrol Service.

 

Reference was made to a number of report paragraphs 3.4 [part of] to 3.7 that were inadvertently omitted from the initial agenda paper distribution. Copies of the relevant paragraphs were circulated and Members agreed to accept these with the report.

 

A Member explained that the matter for calling this meeting had been raised, not to attack the Community Patrol Service, but to shed light on the allegation of ‘free security’. He also relayed his disappointment at the length of time it had taken to bring this matter to the attention of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee.

 

The Managing Director for Delivery informed that Wirral Community Patrol delivers a paid for service undertaking security checks across a range of premises and locations. Some of the premises are private and the typical Service Level Agreement (Contract) requires a physical patrol to proactively visit a location up to 5 times per week depending what level of SLA they had signed up to. As a result, the patrol service is often in a position to be able to drive-by identified ASB ‘hot spot’ locations without varying too dramatically from their route. He further informed that the allegation from an anonymous employee made to a Councillor stating that the Council’s Community Patrol Service were providing ‘free security services’ to Sherlock House, Manor Road, Wallasey should be viewed in context to other requests, and as no different to many other requests for Community Patrol assistance.

 

The report explained that to enable Members to understand the amount of time Community Patrol spent on ‘drive-bys’ of Sherlock House the Head of Community Safety and Transport Services undertook an interrogation of the patrol officers GPS and work data. The outcome of which highlighted the following:

 

·  During the 21 day period between the 13 July and the 9 August Community Patrol undertook 29 ‘drive-bys’ of Sherlock House (some days received multiple visits – weekends, etc).

 

·  No ‘drive-by’ exceeded 3 minutes in real time at the location.

 

·  In comparing the number of ‘drive-bys’ undertaken at Sherlock House against a randomly selected 21 different days, measured between March and August 2016, 229 ‘drive-bys’ to hotspots were recorded on these days.

 

As such, the report concluded that whilst data was unable to provide an accurate picture of the impact, what could be confirmed was that Sherlock House did not receive any preferential treatment,  in either prioritisation as a ‘hotspot’ location or in terms of numbers of ‘drive-bys’.

 

Discussion took place regarding the number of service level agreements, location  ...  view the full minutes text for item 25.