Agenda and minutes

The Chair will welcome those present and invite Members and officers to introduce themselves.  

The Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting and invited each person to introduce themselves. 

The Chair thanked Chorley Council for hosting the meeting.  

Apologies for absence were submitted on behalf of Councillors Nora Ball (Chorley), Rene Blow and Colin Coulton (South Ribble).

Members are reminded of their responsibility to declare any personal interest in respect of matters contained in this agenda. If the interest arises only as result of your membership of another public body or one to which you have been appointed by the Council then you only need to declare it if you intend to speak.

If the personal interest is a prejudicial interest, you must withdraw from the meeting. Normally you should leave the room before the business starts to be discussed. You do, however, have the same right to speak as a member of the public and may remain in the room to enable you to exercise that right and then leave immediately. In either case you must not seek to improperly influence a decision on the matter.

No Members declared an interest in respect of items on the agenda.

Members of the public who have requested the opportunity to ask a question(s) on an item on the agenda will be asked to put their question(s) to the Committee.  Each member of the public will be allowed to ask one supplementary question within his/her allocated minutes. 

No members of the public requested to ask a question.

To receive and consider the report of the Chorley and South Ribble Community Safety Manager which was considered by the Responsible Authority Group on 17 March 2010.

Officers will give a brief presentation giving an overview of the partnership’s performance.

The Vice-Chair of the Responsible Authority Group, Jean Hunter, will be in attendance to present the enclosed report and respond to queries.  The respective Executive Members and officers from Chorley and South Ribble Council’s will also be in attendance. 

The Committee received a presentation from the Chorley and South Ribble Community Safety Manager, Paul Lowe, outlining the performance of the Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership.  Members considered the report enclosed with the agenda which had been presented to the Responsible Authorities Group previously which outlined the progress of the pilot merger between Chorley and South Ribble Community Safety Partnership over the last two years and the way forward.

Comparing figures for the period 1 April 2009 to 4 March 2010 against the same period the year before the Partnership had reduced crime considerably against already record lows for crime last year.  Only two areas were showing increases: Burglary Dwelling and Serious Violent Crime, but these needed to be viewed against record low rates of crime experienced last year. 

Serious Violent Crime would have been affected by the method of recording as Domestic Violence would be included with these figures.  The Partnership were proactively encouraging the reporting of Domestic Violence, but this did have an impact on the figures.  Also, when dealing with percentages a prolific offender could have a massive impact.

Over the last two years the Partnership had reduced Crime by 13% and Criminal Damage by 17%.  In relation to the Most Similar Group Chorley performed well and South Ribble was first.

The Partnership were focussing on National Indicators that had been agreed with Government following in depth analysis of the issues in the area and consultation with members of the public.  The main set of these were the Local Area Agreement (LAA).  For NI 16 (Serious Acquisitive Crime) the target was 833 with performance ahead by 11%, for NI 20 (Assault with Less Serious Injury) the target was 610 with performance ahead by 8% and for NI 49 (Primary Fires) the target was 168 with performance ahead by 8%. 

South Ribble had impressive figures against the LAA targets with significant reductions over and above those set out in the LAA.  Further information on these figures could be provided on request from Paul. 

The Partnership was performing well against the alcohol-related crime targets, however there was work to do in terms of alcohol-related harm within Chorley.  Alcohol-related hospital admissions were up according to the most recently available data. 

For Chorley the main issue of concern was Burglary Dwelling and for South Ribble, Serious Violent Crime. 

Members discussed the target related to alcohol related admissions and noted that the admissions could be related to illness, not necessarily crime.  The figure for those not admitted to hospital was not included in this statistic. 

Councillor Lowe expressed difficulties in querying statistics from the Primary Care Trust relating to the alcohol related admissions.  Officers would feed this back to the Primary Care Trust. 

Members queried progress on the fear of crime and heard that there was a 3 year target of reducing this by 1%.  The Partnership were progressing well with this, but perception and fear of crime was a challenge for the Partnership going forward.

Chief Inspector Richard  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.