Agenda item

The report sets out progress of the Safer Arun Partnership (SAP) during 2019-20 in delivering the strategic priorities contained in its Partnership Plan (2018-2022).  It provides information to enable Members to understand performance to date and provides a summary assessment of the future challenges and opportunities for SAP.

The Community Safety Officer introduced her report to the Working Group. She referred members to the strategic priorities and explained that the partnership existed with the object to reduce crime across the district and involved working closely with many other partnership groups from external organisations. She advised that Members had been provided with the full report at Appendix B and it covered how the partnership had performed against those targets. Furthermore, Appendix C covered case studies that demonstrated the wide working variety across the partnerships. She explained that the strategic intelligence was a statutory requirement and helped to decide the priorities for the partnership for the following year. She then drew members attention to section 1. 4 of the report, the crime statistics, she explained that there had been a 10% total increase in crime for 2019/20 vs 2018/19.  In section 1.4.2 of the report it outlined the different ways that crime was measured. She did confirm to members that the risk and likelihood of becoming a victim of crime in Arun did remain low.

          There were a number of questions then asked by Members and these have been summarised below;

·       Cllr Dixon raised his concerns that overall crime had gone up significantly in the year to 31 March 2020 Pre-Corona virus.  It was asked as how do we compare with other Districts in West Sussex, were we average, had we got bigger problems than other Districts or lesser problems? Chief Inspector (CI) Carter advised that the headline figures across the Sussex area including Brighton & Hove Unitary authority crime rose by just under 9%, the increase seen in Arun was slightly higher but not disproportionate.  There were issues around social deprivation and probably behaviour driven by addiction i.e. stealing to feed a ‘habit’.  Together with the rest of the partnership we are tackling these individuals, but the challenge is what happens to the after care of these people after sentence or prison time.

·       Cllr Gunner queried the figures in the report under 1.4.2 - an increase from 67 crimes to 76 was not a 10% increase it was actually a 13.5% increase.   In terms of the actual strategic intelligence assessment I noted with interest it said that the five objectives for the year for 2019/2020 were serious violence, serious organised crime, community resilience, improving public confidence and tackling anti-social behaviour. How successful do you believe you have been in achieving all five of those priorities?  The Community Safety Officer explained that these were very difficult areas to have sustained reductions in although it is our intention, they are very complex areas.  Serious violence is made up of several different crime types some are to do with County Lines, some associated with domestic abuse. Serious violence feeds into serious & organised crime that feeds into community resilience so for a longer-term approach we need to work with the community to help educate them, so they are able to resist and defend themselves from exploitation.  Crime statistics are only one way to measure what the Partnership does and can be highly variable and fluctuate in part on people’s willingness to report. 

·       Cllr Gunner stated that reply did not answer his question. He went onto say that when you look at the reports, serious violence and serious crime have increased.  Anti-social behaviour, he accepted there had been a decline in referrals from housing providers but what he did not understand was why the report and recommendations were not tougher based on the results of these statistics?  What is the yard stick, measures of success?  CI Carter responded that what we were talking about with the Arun Safer Partnership is how the partnership is working to tackle those issues.  The reporting is down to a number of influencing factors, if we take the drug offences, the way the crime is recorded is set within rules from the Home Office.  Drug offences are only recorded at the point of detection so the more active we are as a police service, in proactively targeting people who are using or dealing drugs the higher the number that will be.  If we don’t deal with it then it will be a lower number.  Similarly, in sexual offences there had been a massive drive over the last 3 years to really support and encourage the reporting of offences many of which are historic.  Cllr Gunner stated that he felt the last response showed that the Partnership had limited powers.

·       Cllr Bicknell raised concerns about theft from shops and asked if more detailed information regarding the 50% increase in Arun was available? He also made comment that theft of motor vehicles was up by 30% and were any of these vehicles showing up for use in raids?  CI Carter responded that a lot of shoplifting is driven by substance addiction, some was down to people who could not afford food and social deprivation.  In respect of the theft of motor vehicles, a high number of these were motorbikes and scooters which were easy to steal and require minimal ‘fencing’ activity.

·       Cllr Ms Thurston asked what connections could be made for funding for you as you had been working a lot on drug issues in Bognor?  Do you think if you had more resources you could do more? And in terms of County Lines, I realise this must be a national priority, but do you think you are having enough help from Central Government to stop drugs coming into our area?  The community Safety Officer responded if we had more resources our capacity to respond would be greater.  One of things we were looking at doing was to provide more support for those who are vulnerable and victims of cuckooing.  In respect to county lines, this had been linked to child exploitation. We get very good support from the Home Office.  There is a reinvigoration of looking at a serious violence duty for safety community partnerships.  We received additional funding to assist with serious violence within Arun. 

·       Cllr Clayden stated that the main thing that worried him was violent crime.  Could our Cabinet Member for Community Wellbeing, who was also a member of the Police and Crime Panel give us feedback from the panel, what was happening to get these figures down? Cllr Yeates responded there had been a drive towards higher funding in the last year and the continuing recruitment of police officers.  The figures relate to the year when this was only just beginning. We had just funded the digital shop radios in Littlehampton.  The BID in Bognor run a similar thing.  This year had been a hard one to judge how things were progressing. Cllr Clayden responded to say this didn’t answer the question and although it was good to see the shop support radio system, the main worry was violent crime.  We need to send a message back to the police commissioner that this was pre Covid and if these figures stay the same, we have a problem.  CI Carter explained that violent crime included 9 different offence categories including dog bites and malicious communications.  When we look at what people might commonly think of violent crime, 1368 offences were assault without injury because the legal definition of assault is an apprehension without violence you don’t actually need to have any physical contact to be assaulted, legally speaking that is a battering.  My starting point is that we shouldn’t have any crime and we should always be challenging ourselves to find out as to why there is criminality at any level.  One statistic around violent crime was the number that relates to domestic abuse, if we are talking about physical assault 41% of assaults in Arun happen behind closed doors, they are domestic abuse and if we take the bigger definition of violent crimes its drops to 36% but 36% of 5302 crimes is an awful lot and this is where a partnership has a clear role to play. The partnership and the Council as a whole, need to think about how we get in front of this abuse and reduce it. During the first lockdown we set up surgeries at supermarkets as people were encouraged to shop alone to be able to talk about domestic abuse without fear of their partner being with them.  Cllr Clayden asked about government funding, this had resulted directly in ‘Operation Safety’ which was a National project trying to tackle the carrying of weapons.  

·       Cllr Brooks said although limitations had been put on machines in betting shops and just this week they had raised the age for scratch cards and the lottery to 18, were people stealing to fund their gambling habits? The Community Safety Officer commented that this is not something that had been raised across the Boroughs and would be dealt with by licensing.  CI Jon Carter advised that he sits on a gambling harm group within Sussex Police who had discussed this.   If people are committing crime to cover gambling debts it is hard to identify.  The Gambling Commission was concerned about increases in problematic gambling therefore the new measures that had been put in place with age limits and regarding advertising.

The Chairman then, with permission of all Members from the Working Group took questions from non-Working Group Members where it was clarified that the recommendations from this report would be presented at the next Cabinet meeting in January 2021 and the n would feed into Full Council in March 2021.

          The Working Group

RECOMMEND TO CABINET:

1)    The work of the Safer Arun Partnership is endorsed and the importance of partnership working in contributing to reducing anti-social behaviour and addressing crime and disorder in Arun is recognised.

Recognition is given to the work of the Safer Arun Partnership in contributing to the delivery of the Council’s strategic priority “supporting you if you need help”.