Agenda item

Report of the Director of Public Protection, Street Scene and Community (enclosed)

The Committee received a report on the scrutiny of the Chorley and South Ribble Community Safety Partnership to enable them to undertake its statutory duty under the Crime and Disorder (overview and Scrutiny) Regulations 2009 to determine if local community safety issues were being dealt with effectively.

It was explained that the Chorley and South Ribble Community Safety Partnership consists of a number of key agencies that form a statutorily determined Responsible Authorities Group (RAG). In previous years this Group met on a quarterly basis to oversee the delivery of the partnerships strategic assessment. However, the decision was taken in 2014, that in an effort to increase partner’s capacity, the number of meetings would be reduced to one single meeting per year with the ability to call an extraordinary meeting as necessary.

An annual open meeting and conference was held in October 2014 and many members of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee attended to experience at first hand the new arrangements and actively participate in the process. The conference was well attended by over 40 people who represented a wide and varied cross section of partner agencies, Ward Members, County Councillors and the Voluntary, Community and Faith Sector.

The conference resulted in the production of the Partnership Plan for 2015/16, identifying the five main strategic priorities that would be delivered by the Officer Working Group (OWG) over the forthcoming year.

Prior to the annual conference taking place a web based public consultation was undertaken seeking public views on what broad areas of community safety the Partnership should be addressing that provided limited responses from 12 people across both Chorley and South Ribble areas and their response were provided within the report for information. Although this was a small number it was still an increase on involvement by the public in previous years with extremely poor attendances at specially arranged public meetings.

A number of representatives were in attendance at the meeting to offer their views and experiences of the new arrangements that included:

Mark Gaffney – South Ribble Council (Chair of the Chorley and South Ribble Partnership)

Chief Inspector Tracie O’Gara – Lancashire Constabulary

Phil O’Donnell – Lancashire Probation

Bridget Cheyne – VCFS

Councillor Paul Walmsley – Executive Member for Public Protection (Chorley Council) had been unable to attend but provided a written response on his view of the new arrangements.

It was the general consensus of the Partnership that the new arrangements were an improvement on the previous regime, although it was recognised that further improvements could be made around public engagement. The web based consultation used to engage the public in the process had been more successful than previous years where the public had been invited to an open meeting. The public consultation and conference provided an opportunity for representatives, partners and the public to identify more local issues which appeared to fit with the overall strategic themes that the Partnership were seeking to address which are, Domestic Abuse, Road Safety, Child Sexual Exploitation, Counter Terrorism and Anti-Social Behaviour and Hate Crime.

The delivery of the Partnership’s Plan is driven by the Officer Working Group and the representatives present explained what is happening across a range of organisations to address these issues. There was good partnership working arrangements that existed across the partners and projects were undertaken in a programmed way agreed by all.

In response to a question from the Committee, the representatives discussed the importance of improving the sharing of intelligence based information. Work was needed to overcome barriers to data sharing and better use of intelligence that different organisations hold about vulnerable people in order to target support where is most needed.

The Committee also discussed other areas that included safeguarding, alternative ways of engaging with the public and building on existing relationships.

The Chair thanked all the representatives for attending.

RESOLVED – That the report be noted.