Agenda item

Cabinet Member: Cabinet Member for Communities, Safety & Business Recovery, Councillor Manju Shahul-Hameed

Officer: Interim Corporate Director of Sustainable Communities, Regeneration & Economic Recovery, Sarah Hayward

Key decision: no

RESOLVED: To recommend to Full Council the adoption of the Community Safety Strategy, as set out in Appendix 1 of the report.

The Cabinet Member for Communities, Safety and Business Recovery (Councillor Manju Shahul-Hameed) introduced the report which would recommend to Council, subject to Cabinet approval, the adoption of the new Community Safety Strategy. She outlined the strategy, praised the coordination of partners and identified the key themes. Lastly, she welcomed the new Director of Culture & Community Safety officer, Kristian Aspinall.

In response to Members questions, the Interim Corporate Director of Sustainable Communities, Regeneration & Economic Recovery (Sarah Hayward) firstly stated that local councillors would be part of discussions in concord with the boards and action point plans as part of the planned further engagement. In terms of female safety, there had been ongoing work with the Family Justice Centre who recently completed a survey of 500 young people women in schools to hear their views on safety in preparation for Mayors Office of Policing and Crime(MOPAC) funding. LB Hammersmith & Fulham received similar funding and Croydon was learning from their experience.

In relation to a point raised in relation to a new safety focus in the Thornton Heath area, Superintendent Andy Brittain stated that the borough of Croydon was a large area and there was now an increase from one to two inspectors for the whole borough. Knife Crime remained a priority for Croydon; approaches included community engagement, in addition to enforcement strategies and extending their more focussed work from New Addington to Thornton Heath. They were looking to strengthen the ward panel structures and for those to be more representative of the community.

In response to Member concerns raised around women’s safety and the night time economy, Superintendent Andy Brittain told Cabinet that the Metropolitan Police Service (MET) had just launched the Street Safe app. He explained the app was to log incidents that may not reach the threshold to formally report a crime and allowed users to pin on a map where incidents occurred. To date since the launch there had been 1,500 reports across London. Secondly, he stated that Croydon had a dedicated team who supported issues with cohesion and safety arising from the night time economy and were on-call 24/7. Additionally, they were sharing training around the borough on ‘Ask Angela’, which was a code phrase for women to use in venues to be safely removed from a dangerous situation in a public setting.

Members raised the following points:

·         The council’s licensing powers and conditions for spiking and needle assaults needed to be reviewed.

·         The community was worried about crime, particularly knife crime, and antisocial behaviour. The Labour Administration had made that a priority to address.

·         National government funding for policing had decreased since 2010 which had consequences today.

·         The strategy was positive piece of work and enhanced the focus on the Public Health approach.

·         The council and health services could learn from successful police and community support operations and practices.

·         It was noted this work had been delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic

The following points were clarified:

·         High priority neighbourhoods, as detailed in the report, would be addressing antisocial behaviour.

·         To enable Ward Panels to work effectively, they were asking the local community to be part of the Panels and report to the Safer Croydon Partnership. This would allow those Panels to plan work programmes to align with the action plan. These would be reviewed  annually.

·         The Ward Panels were a key part of the Mayor’s Engagement Strategy and during the pandemic. Concerns were raised initially on how they would continue to function remotely, however since the success of using online platforms during the past 18 months, they would be used going forward as a permanent feature in a hybrid capacity. They were focussed on increasing the representation on the Panels and it was felt that hybrid options may allow more communities to be reflected in those forums.

·         The strength of the partnership was characterised by the coming together of the council, the Police and the voluntary sector (statutory and non-statutory partners) which was notably strong in Croydon.

·         There was a CCTV team of seven colleagues monitoring the borough around the clock. Issues identified by this team would be reported to the Safer Croydon Partnership.

Disappointment was expressed by the Lead Member for Scrutiny, Councillor Sean Fitzsimons, in that there was no pre-decision scrutiny referenced in the report. Work was carried out during the summer on a cross-party level which had included a series of meetings and briefings with various key figures involved in the Strategy. He highlighted the following conclusions which arose from that engagement:

·         It was clear there was a difficulty for the council to meet its targets, as they were often dictated by external factors. It was important to have measurable and achievable targets.

·         Members were impressed with the commitment between the partners.

·         More data should be available to Members and that the council should be more vigilant on its own reporting.

·         The growing private rented sector should be reflected in the Strategy and the links that insecure housing has to violence.

·         Scrutiny should take an annual review on the progress of the Strategy.

Cabinet agreed that the report would be amended to reflect the additional comments raised in relation to pre-decision scrutiny, as detailed but the Lead Member, ahead of reporting to full Council.

The Leader of the Council delegated authority to the Cabinet to make the following decisions:

RESOLVED: To recommend to Full Council the adoption of the Community Safety Strategy, as set out in Appendix 1 of the report.