Issue - meetings

The Committee received a verbal presentation from Sir Graham Bright, Police and Crime Commissioner. He made the following points:

 

(i)             Different issues were being reviewed, such as anti-social behaviour.

(ii)            Burglary was a priority issue to address.

(iii)          Historically it had been difficult to encourage members of the public to report concerns on the 101 number due to the long response time. A response could now be expected within approximately 30 seconds.

(iv)         The Police would aim to be able to respond to a call anywhere in the county within minutes of a call.

(v)           Referred to the work of Neighbourhood Watches.

(vi)         Members of the public could access Home Office software listing neighbourhood profile information, such as emerging issues and crime levels.

(vii)        Sir Graham had the following priorities:

·       He wanted to speed up the response time by support services to victims of crime. Sir Graham was concerned that victims were traumatised after attacks and may not know how or where to seek help.

·       Focussing on crime prevention.

·       Proactive youth crime prevention through early intervention (through joining up actions with other services) to help young people avoid getting into trouble as this could stigmatise them. For example, providing activities. Sir Graham was seeking sponsorship from businesses to assist with this.

·       Raising the profile of and recruiting more Special Constables, plus giving them specific roles to perform alongside Police Officers.

(viii)      Sir Graham felt the old Police Authority Plan worked well, so he used this as a basis for his own Police and Crime Plan for consistency.

(ix)         Sir Graham needed appropriate funding for his Police and Crime Plan. He was liaising with surrounding counties to look at different ways to work jointly, reduce costs and share resources.

(x)           Crime rates were falling in the county and Sir Graham hoped to continue this trend. Cambridgeshire was one of the safest areas in the country.

 

Members of the public asked a number of questions, as set out below.

 

1.       Mr Taylor asked for clarification on some points made in Sir Graham’s presentation.

 

Sir Graham responded:

(i)             94% of calls to the 101 number were answered within 30 seconds, 100% within 35 seconds. The Call Centre had a monitoring system to record calls missed and the reason why. Sir Graham had expressed his thanks to Call Centre staff for improving call response times.

(ii)            The Draft Police and Crime Plan was available on the Police and Crime Commissioner for Cambridgeshire website. People were asked to comment on it. The Plan could be amended in future and was not set in stone. Consultation comments would be taken on board.

(iii)          Appropriate staff were required to generate and test ideas for the Police and Crime Plan. Sir Graham was recruiting support staff as people undertaking the jobs to date had other roles to perform as well.

(iv)         Sir Graham would set high level Police and Crime Plan priorities after listening to local priorities suggested by others such as the East Area Committee. Input from East Area Committee etc was welcome.

 

In response to EAC Members’ questions Sir Graham said the following:

 

(i)             Reported levels of hate crime had increased, possibly due to greater awareness rather than a higher number of incidents. People did not want to talk about hate crime, but they should be encouraged to report it.

(ii)            Greater agency join up was desirable in future to address hate crime issues and give victims appropriate support from specially trained staff.

(iii)          Sir Graham wanted the NHS to be more involved in the community eg to support people with mental health issues, as arresting them could be detrimental to their condition, so preventative action was desirable to avoid this. The Police, Fire and Ambulance Service could not support people on their own; NHS support was required too for specialist roles such as mental health. Join up may have to be tackled at national level.

(iv)         The Safer Peterborough Partnership was signposted as an example of good practice where agencies had joined up services based on experience from Glasgow. Glasgow staff were expected to visit in May 2013. E-CINS software was used by different agencies to monitor families with issues.

(v)           Sir Graham wanted to work with community and voluntary organisations to make use of their equipment and services to gather evidence of crimes (including raising awareness of and reporting them) and supporting victims. Sir Graham reiterated the need to encourage people to report issues to be followed up by the Police and specialist support agencies.

(vi)         One of Sir Graham’s priorities was crime prevention. He was seeking sponsorship from businesses to support voluntary and community organisation work in this area. For example early intervention could help prevent youth crime by providing activities to prevent mischief such as vandalism. The Police could only respond to crimes, whereas join up with other agencies could lead to the identification and offer of support/intervention to youths and their families to prevent crime.

(vii)        Currently there was no formal partnership to share equipment and services with neighbouring counties. Sir Graham was considering if it would be viable to, with whom and how. The intention was to free up police officers from administration tasks so they could spend more time on the beat.

(viii)      The culture within the Police was changing. Specialist officers were aware of the seriousness of domestic violence, other officers were prompted to recognise when a situation had arisen and call in specialists. The Chief Constable was keen to tackle domestic violence.

 

The Committee asked Sir Graham to come back in future when he felt it appropriate.