Issue - meetings

To review the work of the East Surrey Community Safety Partnership 2019/20.

Members reviewed the work of the East Surrey Community Safety Partnership 2019/20. Cllr R. Ashford, Portfolio Holder for Community Partnerships, gave an overview of the Council’s community safety work. The Council’s community safety and anti-social behaviour officers work closely in partnership with Surrey Police, Surrey County Council, schools and other council teams such as housing and the Joint Enforcement Team (JET) to support its four community safety priorities. These are: tackling anti-social behaviour, preventing domestic abuse and serious organised crime and undertaking anti-terrorist Prevent duties.

Cllr Ashford introduced Insp Angie Austin, Borough Commander for Reigate and Banstead, who attended the meeting, gave a presentation and answered questions from Members. The Reigate and Banstead Specialist Neighbourhood Team priorities were: protecting vulnerable people, targeting prolific offenders, high harm crimes and crimes which have a serious impact on the community and engaging with hard to reach communities.

Inspector Austin highlighted the key areas of policing activity in the borough over the past twelve months, including cuckooing, tackling county-lines drug dealing, child sexual exploitation and identifying and dealing with prolific offenders for firearms, money laundering, drug manufacture and supply, assaults and knife crime.

Police officers continued to engage with hard to reach communities and worked with community development workers to run sessions for example with elderly groups.  They had good contacts with the local mosques and the local Asian Social Group. They wanted to engage more with disability groups and asked Members for their support to work with these groups.

Insp Austin concluded that officers were active in the Borough although they were not always visible to the public due to the high number of 999 calls and work involved with supervising prisoners.

The Head of Community Partnerships set out the Borough’s work on community safety which included statutory responsibilities to work with partners, including the police, to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour, lead management of domestic homicide reviews and manage public space protection orders. Non-statutory activities included overseeing CCTV and tackling domestic abuse although the latter work will become a statutory duty after new domestic abuse laws come into force. In the last year, the Council had employed a new community safety officer and a part-time anti-social behaviour co-ordinator, both from police backgrounds. This meant that the Council was tackling anti-social behaviour at a faster pace than before.

The Council’s Community Safety Officer gave an overview of the Council’s work on its community safety priorities which included working closely with partners to deliver more effective joint enforcement activities to respond to and reduce anti-social behaviour. One example of the problem-solving approach to the work was targeting aggressive begging on the streets, often linked to Serious Organised Crime groups. They also worked with individuals who were rough sleepers to help them get the support they need and take them off the streets.

The Community Safety team works closely with East Surrey Domestic Abuse Service (ESDAS) to raise awareness of domestic abuse. This included holding a successful event at the Harlequin theatre in Redhill called  ...  view the full minutes text for item 28