Issue - meetings

To consider and scrutinise the annual report of the Community Safety Partnership as part of the Board’s statutory role to scrutinise decisions made, or other action taken, in connection with the discharge by the responsible authorities of their crime and disorder functions, in accordance with the The Crime and Disorder (Overview and Scrutiny) Regulations 2009.

The Leader of the Council presented a report, a copy of which had been circulated to each Member and a copy of which appears as Appendix 'A' to these Minutes in the Minute Book. A number of issues were raised by the Board in the subsequent discussion, including:

• The report referred to a specific domestic abuse helpline, but this was not easy to find on the council’s website. The Leader of the Council explained that there had been some work recently undertaken on the website, which had caused some issues where pages had been moved around. Nonetheless, she agreed that it was important that the helpline be more visible to those who may need it and would feed this back to the web team.
• A Board member commented that the council needed to prioritise anti-social behaviour hotspots by providing appropriate levels of streetlighting, keeping areas visible through other means and the expansion of the CSAS officer scheme. The Leader advised that general neighbourhood issues were not for the Community Safety Partnership to deal with, as they took a more strategic role, but was instead for different areas of the council to manage to ensure that harm was reduced. She added the CSP dealt with multi-agency matters, where as the council’s responsibility was to deal with internal matters. The Leader further explained that the CSAS officer scheme had been expanded already and that there were ambitions to expand even further, but the Council needed to work with the resources that it had available to it.
• A Board Member stated that she felt it was important that there were clear and established protocols which set out responsibilities of functions and that it was imperative that the Council worked with multiple agencies to do this and co-ordinate with them effectively in ASB hotspots. The Leader explained that the closure of alleyways in areas with well known problems, including the bus station in Poole had been successful in reducing ASB issues. Other measures had unfortunately been delayed due to Covid-19. Officers were also in the process of building relationships with neighbourhood policing teams and ward councillors to identify hotspots.
• A Board member stated that she was pleased to see reference to West Hill within the report and questioned what would be done to move the issues forward during the establishment of the proposed Crime and Disorder Reduction Strategy and whether or not the O&S Board would be involved in this work, or if it would be dealt with elsewhere. The Leader explained that the Crime and Disorder Strategy would be considered by the cabinet in due course, likely to be in the next six months. She added that the work of the CSP had been paused to focus on work relating to Covid and was about 3-6 months behind as a result. Furthermore, the CSP was led by the police and whilst the council were a partner, they had to be led by the police during the production of the plan, but all  ...  view the full minutes text for item 37