Protecting our communities together.
The Government had a pledge to provide every community in the country with its own dedicated neighbourhood policing team by 2008.
In Warwickshire Police our initiative known as Safer Neighbourhoods began in November 2006 and is now well established.
What is Safer Neighbourhoods?
Safer Neighbourhoods is much more than high visibility policing. Safer Neighbourhoods is a partnership approach to achieving safer and confident neighbourhoods. It is about using local knowledge and information from local people to target crime and disorder issues causing most concern to local neighbourhoods.
Safer Neighbourhood teams are dedicated to a specific geographic area and are locally accountable, identifiable, accessible and responsive to local needs.
A team includes Constables, Police Community Support Officers and Special Constables, working closely with a whole range of individuals from different partner agencies. For example – wardens, housing managers, private security firms, youth workers, Neighbourhood Watch groups and other voluntary organisations.
The size of the neighbourhood served by a team varies from area to area. A ‘neighbourhood’ in a town is very different from one in a predominantly rural area. One team covers one or a cluster of council wards. What is important is that every resident knows the name of their local officers, see them on the street and are able to contact them.
What does this acheive?
Safer Neighbourhoods plays a vital role in community safety
Research shows that only by working closely with local communities can we ensure that the police do not just provide a service, but are a respected and integral part of it.
We need to work with communities not only to make neighbourhoods safe, but to make them feel safe too. The local public perspective matters more than any other. To really understand neighbourhoods and the issues that concern local people we must see the world through their eyes. To do this we need to listen to the people who live with the problems – understand, act and provide feedback.
How do we acheive confidence and engagement?
There is compelling evidence that we can achieve this by providing communities with:
- Access – to policing or community safety services through a named point of contact.
- Influence – over community safety priorities in their neighbourhood.
- Interventions – joint action with partners and communities to solve problems.
- Answers – sustainable solutions to problems and feedback on results.
Teams attend public meetings in their area including the quarterly partnership meetings called Community Forums where members of the public choose priority issues for local agencies to address and report back on.
In summary Safer Neighbourhoods is about building confidence in communities; confidence that the police understand and are dealing with the issues that matter to them, and confidence that they themselves can influence and, where appropriate, participate in addressing the issue.
Confidence in policing is essential. It provides the legitimacy and public support needed to act in preventing crime and bringing offenders to justice.