Issue - meetings

Community Safety Partnership Annual Report

Meeting: 19/09/2019 - Corporate Resources Overview & Scrutiny Committee (Item 36)

36 Community Safety Partnership Annual Report pdf icon PDF 137 KB

Additional documents:

Decision:

That the Committee supports the achievements of the Community Safety Partnership over the last twelve months.

Minutes:

The Chief Executive introduced the Community Safety Partnership (CSP) annual report which provided an overview of activities over the past 12 months.  The statutory duties of the CSP were discharged through the Public Services Board led by Flintshire.

 

Members were introduced to Sian Jones, Community and Business Protection Manager; Richard Powell, Community Safety Team Leader; Rhiannon Edwards, Regional Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence Advisor; District Inspector Gareth Cust of North Wales Police; Gerwyn Davies, Anti-Social Behaviour Co-ordinator; and Mike White, Partnership Manager for Wrexham and Flintshire, North Wales Fire & Rescue Service.

 

A detailed presentation covered the following areas:

 

·         Context

·         Community Safety Delivery Groups

·         Achievements

·         Performance

·         Interaction with the Safer Communities Board

·         Local priorities for 2018/19

 

The Community Safety Team Leader reported a reduction in victim-based crime in Flintshire over the past year with the reduction in anti-social behaviour seen across North Wales.  He gave an overview of interaction with the Safer Communities Board on priority areas to address violence against women, vulnerable adults and young people, as well as protecting communities.

 

Councillor Johnson spoke about the links between poverty, inequality and crime.  In response to comments on hate crime, the appointment of a Community Cohesion Officer for Flintshire (using Welsh Government funding) would help to encourage communities to report incidents.

 

Inspector Gareth Cust spoke about the various methods of reporting crime and raising awareness in schools of issues such as hate crime and County Lines.  He also advised of a training programme with police officers in Flintshire to identify the impacts of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE).

 

In acknowledging the pressures on Police resources, Councillor Richard Jones referred to a late addendum to the Council Plan Monitoring report later on the agenda, in which some Police performance data was missing.  This included the number of reported incidents of domestic abuse and sexual violence which was a priority area.

 

Whilst referring to the complexity of the topic, the Chief Executive spoke about the need to understand the integrity of the data provided by North Wales Police and that an accurate figure would need to be shared with the Committee once available.

 

The Regional Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence Advisor agreed that more clarity was needed on this data due to the way that incidents were recorded.  To resolve this, analysts were reviewing the approach to recording incidents to incorporate all elements of domestic violence and provide an accurate picture.

 

Councillor Richard Jones said that an explanation should have been included to help understanding of the report in order to compare performance year on year.  The Chief Executive agreed and said that at this point the Committee could only accept the figure in the original report with the caveat about ongoing data analysis.

 

Inspector Cust referred to significant changes in crime recording and compliance with regulation standards.  His offer to provide year to date figures on domestic abuse and sexual violence incidents was noted.

 

In response to a question from Councillor Bateman, information was given on different forms of Modern Slavery  ...  view the full minutes text for item 36