The Head of Community Safety & Transport Services will provide a presentation updating Members on progress made against the action plans arising from the 'Ensuring Wirral's Neighbourhoods Are Safe' Strategy.

Prior to consideration of this item, The Chair indicated that he would be taking both item 4 - 'Ensuring Wirral's Neighbourhoods Are Safe' Strategy and item 5 Community Safety Integration Project - Progress Updates together.

'Ensuring Wirral's Neighbourhoods Are Safe' Strategy and Community Safety Integration Project - Progress Update

Mr Mark Camborne, Head of Community Safety & Transport Services introduced the 'Ensuring Wirral's Neighbourhoods Are Safe' Strategy which set the direction for community safety in Wirral over the next five years and would deliver safer, shared and confident communities.

He outlined the priorities which included building stronger and more confident communities where people felt safe; improved Community Safety by tackling the cause and impact of crime and anti-social behaviour; protect the most vulnerable and deliver greater integration of all partner agencies to achieve a Safer Wirral.

The future plan would include realistic SMART action planning; continued work with communities and third sector partners to address the perception and fear of crime; greater integration with third sector organisations to build on community resilience and the introduction of the new Safer Wirral Partnership Board who would be looking at Pledges 7 and 19.

One of the actions from the Pledge was to seek greater integration of community safety resources across all partners and the Safer Wirral Hub was established. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the Chief Constable of Merseyside and the Chief Executive.

Community Safety Integration Project - Progress Update

Superintendent Tracy Hayes who is the Merseyside Police lead on Safer Wirral Hub updated the Committee on the future of the integrated Community Safety Delivery Model.

The Safer Wirral Hub had been established in two phases and the achievements to date were in line with the Council’s new operating model and supported the proof of the concept for Wirral taking the lead across the City Region.

She reported that the ASB Teams direct links with Local Policing team had improved greatly and staff were now aligned to the Local Policing Hubs; there was greater information sharing, joint working on Operations such as Operation Bangor, Staysafe and the established Problem Solving Groups; the ASB manager & Community Patrol supervisor attend the weekly Operations Meeting to target resources more effectively, with focus now on the victim, offender and location utilising ASB analysis & call data and action taken quicker on priority cases through the collaborative working.

The Hub also saw the introduction of the ROC Restorative Justice lead.

Superintendent Hayes highlighted the next steps of the project which included; focus on Pledges 7 & 19; Youth Offending Services - aligning referral pathways with Early Help, Family Safety Unit and ASB team; making the Family Safety Unit more client friendly, influence and support early intervention and make more effective use of other resources;  greater integration with statutory partners for the IOMU and in relation to the MASH create an integrated front door with referrals to EH supported by the Unit  and joint deployments with Local Policing teams; support for vulnerable adults from the 3rd sector; referrals home safety/wellbeing checks from the MRFS and Multi Agency Interventions targeting C.S.E., C.E. Human Trafficking & Modern Slavery.

Mr Ben Ryder from the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service (MFRS) gave an update on the work MFRS were doing to support the Safer Wirral Hub.

An Arson Advocated had been appointed and would be co-located within the Hub with immediate effect. There were also various monthly campaigns in targeted areas such as arson awareness week, which would be on-going in during the next 12 months, using collated intelligence to tackle hotspots. There were also thematic multi-agency campaigns on domestic violence and community safety.

There was also a lot of youth engagement with Cadets, Princes Trust and a District Prevention Manager had been provided to develop referral pathways between the MFRS and the Hub.

Mr Camborne concluded by highlighting the Hub’s 2016/17 performance to date which indicated that Wirral’s crime rate was down by 2% on 2016 which was the lowest in Merseyside; anti-social behaviour was down 11% on last year and the domestic abuse MARAC repeat victimisation was below the national average.

There has been a massive reduction in Community Safety funding and multi-agency officers would be looking into the possible ways to address this; looking at best practice and innovations.

The Chair welcomed the Cabinet Member for Housing & Community Safety, Councillor George Davies.

Councillor Davies indicated that resources attributed to Community Safety had reduced by 70%; incomes had dropped and officers were having to work longer hours.

Previous SLA’s with Magenta Living and some schools had ceased and he commented that the RSL’s needed to work with the Council and partner agencies to keep Wirral safe.

In response to a Members questions in relation to the action plan, Mr Camborne indicated that the targets set were not SMART and would be refreshed for the 2017/18 Pledge action Plan. In relation to how people feeling safe  which was a concern from the previous Wirral Survey, he explained that measuring success was difficult and that officers were capturing both qualitive  and quantative data to feed into the final business case. The Police were also trying to move away from numerical data reporting and making it more about the narrative.

Tracey Hayes in response to Members indicated that in relation to emerging threats and risks, she attended meetings each morning to ascertain what if anything had happened overnight getting updates from the intelligence team. There was also a weekly multi-agency operations meeting looking at ASB and diverting resources accordingly.

In response to a Members question, Mr Camborne clarified that Wirral’s Community Patrol Service worked on a 24/7 basis but had not been intelligence led; officers would now be working towards making this a function. 

RESOLVED:

That Mr Mark Camborne,Superintendent Tracy Hayes, Mr Ben Ryder and Councillor George Davies be thanked for their attendance and informative update.