Agenda and minutes

The Chairman welcomed everyone to the special meeting of the Southern Wiltshire Area Board. This meeting had been scheduled in response to the feedback from the survey which the Board had carried out earlier in the year at a Board meeting and electronically via the Community Area Network. This had established that the two key issues for the community area were:

1.      Local Employment

2.      Community Safety

The aim of this special ‘community safety’ meeting would be to raise the profile of all the resources available to communities for tackling community safety issues and to see what actions should be taken forward by the Board.

There were none.

The Chairman asked people to take part in an exercise to list the  community safety issues in their areas. Some suggestions were provided, these included:

• Antisocial behaviour
• Elderly/vulnerable people in isolation
• Vandalism
• Threatening behaviour
• Gangs
• Intimidation of the elderly
• Dangerous/antisocial parking

After the presentations in the next item, the chairman aimed to ask the groups  if they had heard about possible solutions to the issues they had identified.

The Chairman introduced the following speakers who each gave a presentation on a community safety initiative to the room, followed by an opportunity for questions.

Inspector David McMullin – Wiltshire Police

The Salisbury and surrounding rural areas were doing well, with a reduction to crime figures over the past several years. Wiltshire was now ranked as one of the safest counties to live in.

Several community safety initiatives were already in operation or were due to be trialled in the community area, these included:

• Neighbourhood Watch
• Community Speed Watch
• Farm Watch
• Street Watch

Street Watch was an initiative which was currently in operation in Salisbury and has proved to be working well. The Police aimed to trial this scheme in the Southern Wiltshire community area and were keen to work with the parish and residents of Downton to establish whether the scheme could be developed there.

This is a scheme where residents in high-vis jackets walk around the community, challenge inappropriate behaviour and report back to the police. For more info see the official Street Watch website: http://www.street-watch.org.uk/ If you are interested in setting up a scheme you should talk to your NPT. Inspector McMullin added that this was a scheme which did work and could bring huge benefits to the community.

Question:

Is it wise to ask people to go out and patrol their own area, as some members of a CSW team had received abuse and had felt unsafe as a result.

Answer: The whole ethos is that it is local people looking after their own area, it might not be as effective for people to do it in other areas. Sergeant Dean Garvin added that he would follow up any reported incidents of abuse to CSW or Street Watch volunteers and contact the culprit and their employer to discuss the issue.

Questions:

A local resident had previously lived in France, where any issues of bad behaviour were reported to the mayor in the village, could the same system work here with incidents being reported to the parishes to raise with the police.

Answer: As long as the incident is reported it doesn’t really matter who reports it. However, the idea of having a Community Safety rep on each parish council is important and would improve liaison between parish councils’ and community safety organisations.

Elizabeth Ngero – Community Speed Watch Administrator introduced Neil Owens, a member of the Ford CSW group, who gave an overview of how the group became involved in the scheme.

• Neil had attended an Area Board to ask about CSW after he was concerned about the speeding vehicles passing through the village, causing a danger for his children.
• Subsequently he completed the online form on the issue system to have the metro count installed to test the speed of vehicles as they pass through.
• The resulting data proved that there was a speeding issue.
• The road was approved for the CSW scheme and was then visited by a CSW officer, volunteers were  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

The Chairman decided that there was insufficient time to carry out the post mortem on the round table exercise carried out earlier. However, he felt confident that most of the groups had listed the same types of issues and that there had been a broad similarity across the room.

The guest speakers had provided information on a broad repertoire of services available, which could be used to tackle some of the issues. He urged people to continue to use the online Issue System and that Tom Bray, Community Area Manager would issue an appropriate response.

Parish Councils have an important role to play, if your parish Council does not already have a Community Safety lead, then maybe it should nominate someone to act as a point of contact. If your parish council does have one, please let Tom Bray know who this is.

The Neighbourhood Watch scheme was also an important player in maintaining and improving community safety and we should consider whether their role could be adapted to include on the street coverage.