Decision details

Discussion:

The Chairman welcomed the Deputy Area Commander (Superintendent Des Keers), representing the Chairman of the Community Safety Partnership (CSP), Inspector Gary Woodward from the Drug and Alcohol Action Team and Nicola Endacott, senior analyst, from Kent Police to the meeting.

Superintendent Keers gave a presentation covering the following points:

·        the new structure of the CSP;

·        hallmarks of effective partnerships;

·        the new CSP Performance Delivery Group and examples of issues that it could deal with;

·        the Confidence and Anti-Social Behaviour Forum;

·        the local community safety team structure;

·        current performance – improvement since last year;

·        current progress – less victims of crime, reduction in vehicle crime, increased confidence, some of the highest detected crime rates in Kent, less than 2 burglaries a day in Medway;

·        current challenges – single confidence measure, new government policies, efficiency savings, regeneration of Medway;

·        what is needed in the future – clear direction, stability, less bureaucracy, community cohesion, youth engagement, elderly support and non-saturation of safety messages;

·        feedback to Member queries from previous meeting on 16 February 2010.

The committee was then shown a film about the successful ‘Safe Exit’ campaign aimed to help women away from prostitution and to change their behaviour and lives. The campaign also targeted men caught kerb-crawling and provided a course aimed at changing their outlook and behaviour towards women.

The Committee made various comments and asked questions, including the following:

·        are the housing providers, where the prostitutes are housed for the Safe Exit campaign, able to cope with the erratic lives of some very difficult women and allow their housing to continue thereby providing stability for them? Inspector Woodward responded that the housing providers were generally charitable trusts and very experienced with all types of tenants and to date all housing issues had been overcome. The charitable trusts provided key workers to help the women claim benefits, access education, etc. which worked extremely well;

·        could street drinking and underage drinkers be tackled as the next topic, especially in Chatham town centre? Inspector Woodward replied that the key to dealing with this problem would be in the same way as prostitution and there were currently care workers going out jointly with Police and Medway’s Community Safety officers as outreach work on the most entrenched drinkers. The partnership was also targeting licensees about the provision of alcohol to underage drinkers;

·        With reference to the current structures, was there a danger that the CSP could become too corporate and stop successful engagement with those it served? Officers responded that this was possible - but that the CSP would be run, as far as was possible, to oversee the priorities for Medway and send out the key messages but would continue to deliver projects on a bespoke service;

·        what direct action was there against drug dealers? Nicola Endacott explained the varied intelligence networks used by Kent Police to prioritise work against dealers. Six ‘gangs’ had been identified in Medway and three of these were currently being investigated and analysed on a daily basis;

·        with reference to the feedback on matters raised at a previous meeting, Members clarified that the ‘safe highways’ routes for students that had been discussed were from the university campus and not Mid Kent College. The reactions and problems previously discussed where when those students ventured into Chatham High Street.

Decision:

The committee thanked the Community Safety Partnership for the presentation and requested a copy of the presentation to be circulated to Members of the Committee.