Agenda item

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

Representatives of Lancashire Constabulary will be present at the meeting to answer any questions.

The Committee welcomed DCI Jonathan Clegg and PS Neil Sladen to the meeting who were attending to answer questions of the members in relation to the deployment of Police Community Support Officer’s (PCSO) in Chorley.

Councillor Paul Walmsley, Executive Member (Public Protection) was also attending along with the Head of Health, Environment and Neighbourhoods, Simon Clark.

The Director of Public Protection, Streetscene and Community had submitted a report to enable the Committee to meet the Council’s statutory obligation to undertake an annual scrutiny review of the Chorley and South Ribble Community Safety Partnership with the particular focus for 2015/16 being PCSO deployment in Chorley.

It was explained in the report that PCSO’s are employed by Lancashire Constabulary to support the work of the police particularly in the role of neighbourhood or community policing. PCSO numbers had increased steadily since their introduction several years ago and in Chorley the base number was around 22 in number.

For a number of years Chorley Council, through a Memorandum of Understanding, has augmented this base number through an arrangement with the Constabulary that originally part funded 50% of the cost of an additional PCSO, amounting to 22 additional PCSO’ at a cost to the Council of £242,000 in 2009.

In 2012, the authority agreed with the Constabulary to part fund a further 5 PCSO’s at the same rate, increasing our annual contribution to £297,000. This means that there are currently a total of 49 PCSO’s in Chorley, of which 27 are additional provision, part funded by the Council.

However, Members noted, that whilst the Council’s contribution of £11,000 per PCSO has stayed static it now no longer provides 50% of the cost of a PCSO. In real terms it now amounts to approximately 33% of the cost. The annual Council contribution of £297,000 levers in an additional £584,000 worth of resource from the Constabulary who fund the remaining.

Members are aware of the financial constraints being place on the Constabulary and as a result of those constraints a review of PCSO numbers across Lancashire has been undertaken based on risk and threat. On that basis, the Constabulary have determined that the base number of PCSO’s for the Chorley area will be set at 14. However, given the authority’s level of contribution the Constabulary are able to increase PCSO numbers deployed in Chorley to a total of 27 PCSO’s.

In addition the Constabulary are seeking to task and deploy a small number of the PCSO resource away from geographic policing duties (i.e. patrols and visibility), to early intervention and prevention case work. This application of resources to early intervention and protection work is one that accords with the Councils focus for resources allocation, in that directing resources upstream reduces the need for expensive crisis intervention later.

PS Neil Sladen delivered a presentation on the work of the Police Early Action Team. The team had been allocated 4 PCSO’s at the start of September who had been deployed as follows:

·         Youth Intervention/Family Support – 2 X PCSO’s

·         High Intensive Users (HIU’s) – 1 X PCSO

·         Cadet Support – 1 X PCSO

A further 4 PCSOs are projected to be redeployed in January 2016 which the Early Action Team are looking to utilise in areas like primary schools, restorative justice interventions and working in partnership with Barnardo’s on organised crime gangs (OCGs)

It was emphasised that all PCSO’s were still undertaking late shifts and weekend working; they continued to be highly visible, engaging with and reassuring the community and gathering intelligence. The work that they were now undertaking for the Early Action team should be viewed positively as a different way of problem solving to prevent issues from worsening.

Early action is essentially prevention but not traditional prevention, it is people focused prevention. Early action is not a totally new approach, it is essentially problem solving, getting to the root cause of the issue at the earliest opportunity and involves a multi-agency approach with a family or individual, intervening early to prevent problems occurring rather than picking up the up the pieces.

There are essentially three types of early action:

Primary Prevention:

Preventing or minimising the risk of problems arising. Examples of this are the school education programme about Child Sexual Exploitation and National Health Campaigns such as 5 a day.

Secondary Prevention:

Targeting individuals or groups at high risk or showing signs of a particular problem to try and stop it occurring. For example a teenager going missing for the first time and threatening self-harm.

Remedial intervention:

Intervening once there is a problem, to stop it from getting worse, examples of this are offender management and youth offending prevention activity.

As a result of early intervention individuals are less likely to enter the criminal justice system and less likely to need services of police and other agencies in the future.  This will in turn reduce demand on frontline resources.

Members asked how this new way of working would be promoted as they thought that the Constabulary needed to get the message out to the residents about role changes.   This had been recognised by the police and there was to be a force campaign delivered shortly. Some of this was also around, changing attitudes internally within the force, to get officers thinking differently about their approach.

Members were assured that police personnel whether it be community beat managers, neighbourhood police officers or PCSO’s were allocated in response to risk and need and a request to provide statistics on the amount of fixed penalty notices was agreed to be provided.

The Committee discussed what performance monitoring information was available to evidence measurable outcomes. It was explained that whilst the Constabulary had masses of statistical data the main reliance on whether or not the early intervention was working was anecdotal evidence that could take a long time to achieve, sometime years. The Early Action team were starting to build up a number of case studies that were often powerful stories, amounting to real changes in a person’s life that were attributed to early intervention and in the longer term would save valuable resources. It was agreed by the Committee that these new ways of working would need time to embed into the service and asked if DCI Clegg and PS Sladen would return to a future meeting of the Committee to see how the team has progressed.

The Chair, thanked the police officers and the Executive Member (Public Protection) for their attendance at the meeting.

Councillor June Molyneaux left the meeting.

The Committee agreed that it would have been helpful to have had representation from the Neighbourhood Policing Team (NHPT) at the meeting to provide the detail on PCSO deployment in the neighbourhood policing arena and thought that it would be a good idea to invite them to the next meeting of the Committee in January to gain their perspective of the changes as Members were still concerned about the impact that the reduction in PCSO’s and deployment of some to Early Action would have on neighbourhood policing

In addition Members were very clear that they would like to see both quantitative and qualitative data in terms of PCSO deployment and their impact and asked if this too could be provided at its next Committee meeting for their consideration before inviting DCI Clegg and PS Sladen back to their meeting in March to review the six months of PCSO deployment into Early Action. The Committee will then finalise a report with recommendations arising out of its findings for the Councils Executive to consider.

RESOLVED

1.    That the report be noted.

2.    That both quantitative and qualitative data be requested from Lancashire Constabulary relating to PCSO deployment and thir impact for the next meeting of Overview and Scrutiny Committee in January 2016.

3.    That a representative from the Neighbourhood Policing Team (NHPT) be invited to the next meeting of Overview and Scrutiny Committee in January 2016 to provide the detail on PCSO deployment in the neighbourhood policing arena.

Councillor Debra Platt left the meeting.