Meeting documents

Bath and North East Somerset Community Safety and Drugs Partnership

Community Safety and Drugs Strategy 2005-08

Contents

1. Covering Letter

2. Partnership Strap Line, Vision, Values and Aims

3. Partnership Structure

4. Strategic Priorities

5. Purpose of Strategy and how it is linked to the Audit process

6. Section 17

7. Summary of Audit Findings and Development of Strategic Priorities

8. Targets

9. Reporting and Evaluation

10. Glossary

11. Appendices

1. Covering Letter

It is with great pleasure that we publish the Community Safety and Drugs Strategy covering the period 2005-2008. This strategy has been built upon the good work that the partnership, and all its partners, has delivered over the last three years.

There have been a number of successes stemming from our current strategy that have helped to shape the way forward for this strategy. In this period the Partnership itself, as well as the Crime and Drugs agendas, have changed considerably. It is therefore prudent, as well as a legislative requirement to review the strategy and ensure we are moving in the right direction.

We have undertaken a large consultation exercise to ensure that the strategy meets the needs of our unique community, as well as those priorities designated by central government. We believe that we have the right balance of priorities in order to Make Bath and North East Somerset `a safer place to live, work and visit'.

As a partnership we welcome the Local Area Agreements (See Appendix 1), which are lead by the Local Strategic Partnership, and encourage more community ownership of the Community Safety and Drugs strategy across all partners from the statutory, voluntary and private sector. With this in mind we would like to direct you to our web site and invite you to become a member of the partnership stakeholder forum, or to use the web site to keep up-to-date on our current work. www.bathnes.gov.uk/communitysafety)

We look forward to the new strategy with renewed anticipation and excitement. We have proved that in the past a community safety strategy delivered well makes a difference and we aim to make even more of a difference over the next three years as we will be building on the positive work of the last three years.

Signature & CSDP Logo

Mary Corcoran

Chair, Community Safety and Drugs Partnership

Strap-line:

Reducing Crime and Promoting Safety:

Vision:

To reduce crime and anti-social behaviour, at the same time as increasing community confidence, in Bath and North East Somerset

Values:

to offer high quality and cost effective services and to ensure equality of opportunity

in an environment of integrity, trust, respect, openness and accountability which is supported by a listening and learning culture

Aims:

B7 reducing and treat those perpetrating Alcohol related crime

B7 reducing Anti-social behaviour

B7 building Community Confidence

B7 increasing awareness and intervention in Domestic Violence

B7 reducing and treat Drug misuse

B7 increasing awareness and intervention in Hate Crime

B7 reducing Volume crime

B7 reducing the number of young people committing crime and support those who crime is committed against

3. Partnership Structure

For structure diagram see Appendix 2

The Partnership is comprises of 4 layers comprising of;

- Strategic Priority Working Groups

- Community Safety Operational Team

- Responsible Authorities Group

- Community Safety and Drugs Partnership

This all encompassing structure enables the Partnership to work towards agreed priorities, yearly action plans and agreed pooled budgets. A virtual pooled budget is currently managed through the Partnership with overall financial control being held by the governing agency.

Officer and practitioners feed into the working groups and the Operational Team meeting. The operational decision making group, the Responsible Authorities Group inform the Executive Member Group of key decisions and issues.

The Partnership will conduct two stakeholder events per year to enable all stakeholders and the wider community to become engaged in the partnership and play a vital role of tackling key community safety and drugs issues.

4. Strategic Priorities

Through consultation with partner agencies and the general public we have identified five local priorities and have been given three national priorities to focus on for the next three years.

The national priorities are:

B7 Anti-Social Behaviour

B7 Domestic Violence

B7 Hate Crime (nationally with a focus on racial hatred)

Local priorities are:

B7 Alcohol Misuse

B7 Community Confidence (reducing the fear of crime)

B7 Drug Misuse

B7 Volume Crime

B7 Young People and Crime (as both victims and perpetrators)

These are the eight priorities that the Community Safety and Drugs Partnership will be focusing on, in the period 2005 - 2008.

ALCOHOL

Aim:

To reduce the negative impact on communities and health of alcohol misuse

Objectives:

B7 To map the current provision of Alcohol interventions, services, regulation and treatments

B7 To create an Alcohol strategy and action plan in line with the national strategy interventions

B7 To draw in additional funding in order to meet the needs of partner agencies and the action plan to support the strategy by April 07

Targets:

B7 To create a baseline measure for Alcohol misuse in the Bath and North East Somerset area by October 2005 and increase interventions by year on year

B7 To have an Alcohol Strategy and annual action plan by October 2005

B7 To have increased the funding for alcohol interventions by a specified percentage defined by the action plan and research

Performance measure:

B7 Mapping complete

B7 To have a strategy in place will all partners working towards the action plan

B7 Additional funding coming into the area in order to assist with tackling alcohol misuse

Baseline: We currently do not have dedicated funding for alcohol treatment and therefore do not monitor this treatment separately. It is hoped that funding for a baseline study can be obtained within the three years that this strategy runs.

ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR

Aim

To reduce incidences of anti-social behaviour (ASB) via collaborative working and positive, pro-active interventions

Objectives

B7 To create a strategy to direct the work and agreed processes of ASB teams

B7 To promote awareness and usage of ASB packages and interventions within partner organisations

B7 To increase the understanding of the wider community as to the usage of ASB package of interventions via positive proactive press interventions

Targets

B7 To have a Strategy and annual action plan for the full package of ASB interventions by April 2006

B7 To have annual programme of events and `off the shelf' literature for partner agencies

B7 To have a communications strategy with all partners that ensures a pro-active and positive approach to tackling anti-social behaviour by April 2006

Performance

B7 Established ASB Strategy

B7 Fire Service Targets (reduction of deliberately lit fires and reduction of hoax calls)

B7 Number of ASB Partnership events

B7 Communications Strategy in place

COMMUNITY CONFIDENCE

Aim:

To increase community confidence through reassurance initiatives, education, support and diversion.

Objectives:

B7 To improve community confidence by ensuring the mainstreaming of community safety and intervention initiatives across the area

B7 To create an overarching strategy to funding community confidence initiatives, working in partnership across public, private and voluntary sectors and with the community in Bath and North East Somerset

B7 To create a joint strategy in order to deliver a clear and consistent community confidence message

Targets:

B7 To create a baseline across all partners of community safety initiatives and increase community confidence through this year on year

B7 To have a funding strategy agreed by all relevant partners by July 2005

B7 To have a community safety communications strategy with all partners that ensures a pro-active and positive approach to build community confidence by April 2006

Performance measure:

B7 British Crime Survey measures `fear of crime' only to Force level.

B7 Having one planning cycle for all funding

B7 Voicebox Survey

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Aim:

Objectives

B7 To provide services and improve access to support for women, children and men survivors of domestic violence and abuse

B7 To improve effectiveness of legal protection to victims / survivors through civil and criminal law

B7 To implement programmes of prevention, including public, multi-agency, children's and perpetrators' education

Targets

B7 To implement the delivery of accessible services of support to women, children and men survivors of domestic violence and abuse

B7 To have joint policies and procedures across agencies in contact with victims, survivors and perpetrators to be reviewed annually

B7 To deliver 6 training or domestic violence and abuse events across the partnership each year

B7 Number of training events

B7 No. of joint policies and procedures

B7 A perpetrator section within Domestic Violence Strategy

DRUGS

Aim:

To work in partnership to produce and implement effective prevention, treatment and enforcement that reduces drug related usage, illness and crime

Objectives:

B7 Reducing the supply of illegal drugs

B7 Reducing drug use and drug related offending through treatment and support whilst reducing drug related death through harm minimisation

B7 To prevent today's young people from becoming tomorrows problematic drug users

Targets:

B7 The Government's Drugs Strategy target is to `increase the participation of problem drug users in treatment programmes by 55% by 2004, and by 100% by 2008, against a baseline

B7 To increase year on year the proportion of users successfully sustaining or completing treatment programmes'.

B7 Refer to Annual Treatment Plan.

Performance Measures:

B7 Key Performance indicators are monitored across both adult and young people's work within the Annual Treatment Plan including;

HATE CRIME

Aim:

To increase the reporting and effective prosecution of hate crime, by increasing the avenues available to report hate crime and providing effective support for victims focussing on Race, Homophobic and Disabilist Crime

Objectives

B7 To map the current provision of hate crime interventions and services

B7 To create a hate crime strategy and action plan in line with the national guidelines

B7 To draw in additional funding in order to meet the needs of partner agencies and the action plan to support the strategy

Targets

B7 To create a baseline measure for hate crime in the Bath and North East Somerset area by October 2005 and increase interventions year on year

B7 To have an hate crime strategy and annual action plan by October 2005

B7 To have increased the funding for hate crime interventions by a %age as defined by the action plan and research

Performance measures

B7 Mapping complete

B7 To have a strategy in place will all partners working towards the action plan

B7 Additional funding coming into the area in order to support strategy and action plans

Volume Crime

Aim: To reduce Volume Crime against both person and property

Objectives:

B7 To build on the work of the Prolific and other Priority Offenders Unit (PPOU)

B7 To effectively manage crime through targeted reduction and prevention initiatives

B7 To work with vulnerable groups to reduce the chances of them becoming victims

Targets:

B7 To target at least 25 Prolific and other Priority Offenders each year

B7 To meet our Home Office agreed target for the reduction in volume crime by 2007-08

B7 To continue to support and fund community engagement to educate and support vulnerable groups (through initiatives such as Elder Aware and Bobby Van as highlighted in Community Confidence initiatives)

Performance measures:

B7 Number of interventions by the PPOU

B7 Home office targets and agreement

B7 The number of successful interventions and safer homes

Definition of Volume Crime:

A `basket' of crimes designated by central Government (Home Office). These crimes include:

Domestic Burglary

Theft of Motor Vehicles

Theft from Motor Vehicles

Personal Robbery

Wounding and ABH

Common Assault

Theft from person

Vehicle Interference

Criminal Damage

Theft of Pedal Cycle

Young People

Aim:

Promoting positive outcomes; preventing negative outcomes for children and young people

Objectives:

B7 To contribute to the five outcomes of the Children's Act

B7 To contribute to delivering the outcomes of the Youth Justice Plan

B7 To ensure that Community Safety, Drugs and Youth Crime (to and of) are incorporated in the Bath and North East Somerset 2006 Children's and Young Peoples Plan

Targets:

B7 That Children and Young People feature in every strand of the Community Safety and Drugs Strategy with reference to the Children's Act and it's outcomes

B7 To prevent and reduce offending by young people (10 to 17 yr olds)

B7 To have a Children and Young peoples Plan with Community Safety and Drugs work underpinning all five of the outcomes within the plan

Performance measures:

B7 To evidence in all action plans supporting this strategy

B7 Outcome indicators from Youth Justice Plan

B7 Action Plan for Children and Young Peoples Plan that shows Community Safety and Drugs as an important theme

B7 KPI's to be added here

5. Purpose of Strategy

The act set out statutory requirements for responsible authorities to work with other local agencies and organisations to develop and implement strategies to tackle crime and disorder and misuse of drugs in their area. These statutory partnerships are known as Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs) The responsible authorities are:

A Community Safety partnership, acting as the local CDRP has been in existence in Bath and North East Somerset since, before 1998. In 2004 the Community Safety Partnership joined with the local Drugs Action Team (DAT) to make a unified Community Safety and Drugs Partnership (CSDP).

The Act requires responsible authorities to, over a three year cycle,

This is the first time that Crime and Disorder and Drugs Misuse strategies have been combined. The review of levels and patterns, known as the Community Safety Audit, published in October 2004 set out the following broad strategic priorities.

The strategy will set the priorities, aims and objectives against which success in terms of community safety and drugs will be judged. Consultation on these priorities was conducted and results can be found in Section 8.

6. Section 17

To ensure that a full picture of the work on Community Safety is available to support this document a Section 17 exercise has been undertaken.

Section 17 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 imposes a duty on authorities to which the section applies;

`to exercise its various functions with due regard to the likely effect of the exercise of those functions on, and the likely effect of the exercise of those functions on, and the need to do all that it can reasonably do to prevent crime and disorder in it's area.

With this in mind we have undertaken an exercise with all of our major partner organisations (excluding the Police and Probation whose mainstream occupation is to deliver Crime and Disorder reduction initiatives). This exercise outlines the work being delivered throughout our partner organisations mainstreamed work that delivers crime and disorder reductions.

This background information is not an exhaustive list but offers a baseline from which to improve and embed crime and disorder reduction initiatives throughout the day to day work of both statutory and not profit sectors working in the partnership.

See Appendix 7 for matrix of projects impacting on community safety.

7. Summary of Audit Findings and Development of Strategic Priorities

It is a requirement of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 that all Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships produce a Crime and Disorder Audit every three-years and consult on its findings, produce a Community Safety and Drugs Strategy and to monitor and evaluate.

The Partnership produced a detailed `full' Audit document and an `Executive Summary' document, both of which can be obtained by contacting the Partnership.

Partnerships are required to consult on the findings of the Audit for a period of 12 weeks. Consultation was completed in the 2^nd week of January, 2005. As part of our consultation process the Executive Summary was circulated to all officers within the Partnership and to all stakeholders. The distribution list included all members of the Community Safety and Drugs Partnership, Responsible Authorities Group and the Community Safety Operational Team Meeting, all Working Groups within the Partnership, all Councillors, Parish and Town Councils, Voluntary Organisations and the wider community. A wallet-sized consultation leaflet was also produced and circulated to all partners for distribution and to public offices and resource centres. Consultation articles also appeared in the local press and within the Council's quarterly newsletter that is distributed to all households.

64 responses were collated, 82% of which agreed with the suggested strategic priorities. The consultation exercise also asked the question ` What are you most worried about?', see Fig 1 (below) for a summary of comments received.

Fig 1: Feedback on consultation question `What are you most worried about?'

Public consultation highlighted 14 areas of concerns. Eight of these will be addressed through the Strategic Priorities for the next three years. These are;

Alcohol

Anti-Social Behaviour

Community Confidence

Domestic Violence

Drugs

Hate Crime

Young People

Volume Crime

The six remaining areas that are not recognised within this strategy are being addressed through various agencies within Bath and North East Somerset. These are;

Credit Card Fraud: The issue is tackled directly by the Police

Homelessness: Through Supporting People and Homelessness Partnership in B&NES

Police Staffing: Avon and Somerset Police Authority and Police Constabulary are statutory bodies with the Community Safety and Drugs Partnership

Prison Aftercare: Avon and Somerset Probation Service are statutory members of the Community Safety and Drugs Partnership

Road Safety: This issue is addressed through Bath and North East Somerset's five year Road Safety Plan 2000-05 and through the Local Transport Plan Two.

Victims Victims are an underlying theme throughout this Community Safety Strategy and will be addressed within all strategic priorities.

8. Targets

At the present time we are awaiting confirmation of Government set targets for each of the agencies delivering under this strategy. We are also awaiting the formulation of strategies and action plans for some of the strategic priority areas.

An additional `targets' appendix will be added when we know these figures and will be updated regularly. This will be able to be viewed on the Community Safety Web site.

Each Action Plan will have local targets attached to it and these will be reported against when the project/strategic area report back (see reporting and evaluation).

There are national targets set for:

The Council (specifically Social and Housing Services)

The Police

The Primary Care Trust

The Probation Service

The Fire Authority

All of these will be reported in one matrix and collated centrally.

There are also local targets set out in each of the Strategic Priority Action Plans. These will be reported on through each of the 6 monthly updates from the governance body managing the action plan (partner or partnership or funded worker).

9. Reporting and Evaluation

The strategic actions for this plan will be regularly assessed and reviewed to ensure that they address the priorities as defined within this strategy. All funded projects and posts (excluding core posts) will be required to submit a half yearly report on actions and outcome to the Community Safety Team.

The reports on progress and action may be on a project by project basis, around a specific role or as part of the fulfilment of a wider strategy (via a partnership such as PAHC, PADV (for example) through their action plan updates) There will be a standard pro-forma that will be used by all plans, projects and staff that outlines the work undertaken.

The actions undertaken and the monies spent in supporting this strategy will then be reported to both the Responsible Authorities Group (the operational arm of the management of the Community Safety and Drugs Partnership) and the Community Safety and Drugs Partnership (governance group). This reporting will take the form of phased quarterly reports on each strategic priority area.

Each of the major funders will also receive their own reports as defined within their governance structures, for example the Council will continue to have quarterly performance reports, Government Office South West (as the custodians of Home Office and Office of the Deputy Prime Minister funding) will continue to have their quarterly reports - each in the format as defined by that organisation.

There will be a register of projects that would like to be considered for funding and this will be kept up to date and as and when additional funding becomes available these projects will be considered. There is no traditional funding cycle for the Community Safety pot of money and part of the pot of money comes from the Council and this is pre-designated to Council priorities around Community Safety (which will take into account the findings and direction of the audit) but will be decided by the Executive Member for Community Safety.

The minutes of the CSDP, RAG and project evaluations will be placed on the Web Site to ensure transparency and that the wider stakeholder group will be able to see and understand the funding decision that are being made.

Each strategic priority will be assigned a named officer responsible for the performance management against the key objectives and associated action plans.