Agenda item

a) Parish Council Showcase – Downton Carers Group

b) Community Policing – local issues and priorities - Inspector Pete Sparrow or PC Matt Holland

c) Community Engagement Manager – Karen Linaker

·       Youth Activities Provision - Update

·       Community Safety Directory  - Update

·       Rights of Way event feedback

Parish Council Showcase – Downton Carers – Jane Brentor

In Downton, we have a carers group made up of lots of organisations in the area, including the Police, Chemist, Dentist and the Church. Between us we have carried out a number of projects, one of those was to produce a slideshow detailing information on the different services that organisations provide across the area. This was produced with the aim of showing it in the GP surgery, to be viewed by people whilst they wait.

Why did we do this?

Downton is a fantastic village with an above average proportion of older people. 30% of older people report feeling isolated or lonely, but we recognised that it was not just older people that felt this way.

There are 32 different clubs or organisations in the village. The more we did, the more we found out about the village, and in doing this, we realised that there were a lot of people that didn’t know about these organisations.

It took over a year to finish the project, one hurdle was getting the info slides back when we requested them. We also found out that the surgery’s computer was not compatible with the slideshow, so the Parish Council kindly paid for a re-conditioned laptop to run these slides at the surgery.

We ended up with a huge slideshow, with over 90 slides and produced a paper booklet of all the contact details for the organisations. We also have a small group of volunteers who are able to go to attend first sessions at the groups and clubs, for those that find this first step difficult.

We have been invited to attend the GP practice meeting to speak to the GPs and staff, to ask them to encourage patients to use some of the businesses and organisations that Downton has to offer.

We hope to use this in a variety of other settings, maybe the library. Our Parish surgery covers a wider area other than just our parish.

The Chair thanked Jane and noted that this was a really worthwhile project, and suggested that maybe there were other areas that could take this idea forward as a collaborative effort to replicate it in their areas.

Community Policing – Inspector Pete Sparrow

There have been several changes to staffing. John Hutchings was promoted to Inspector and would not be replaced.

·       Neighbourhood Community Issues slightly delayed at the moment

·       4 new PCSO’s in the area, creating a shuffle of staff

·       Simon Nash remains rural

·       Matt Smith had moved to Wilton, and continued with his rural focus and John Taylor had replaced Matt

Key areas:

·       In Downton there had been a series of antisocial behaviour incidents and low level offenses carried out by a group of teenagers. We have worked to get on top of this and there had been several arrests.

·       Catapults – We would like to see some change to the law around the use of catapults.

·       Burglary – There had been a rise over the last few months, particularly in Old Sarum. On Sunday night Officers saw and arrested 2 men who were ‘going equipped’.

The Chairman passed on thanks from the Board to Inspector Hutchings for all he had done for the Community Area. He also thanked Inspector Sparrow for the comprehensive Community Report circulated with the agenda papers.

Questions:

·       Thanks for the recent Police efforts in Downton, we have seen an improvement in antisocial behaviour.

·       Do any of the emergency services use the locator app ‘what 3 words’ ?

Answer: Yes and no, we did use it successfully with a missing person incident, and it was vital. It is not currently compatible with our systems, but it was hoped that in the new year when we have an upgrade to our systems it would then be compatible. It is a very useful tool when trying to find an address or a person.

Community Engagement Manager – Karen Linanker

Summary of funding slide was shown. For every £1 the Board had invested, a further £3.49 had been levered in from other sources.

Last year £40,000 came directly to this community and funded 23 projects. It was hoped that the same level of funding would come to us in the next financial year.

Youth Activities Provision update

We have three main groups in Southern Wiltshire. Winterslow had fed back that their young people were loving the activities the Board had commissioned this year.

All of the youth groups were managing to serve 30-40 young people each week. Old Sarum was currently reviewing its youth leader arrangements.

Community Safety Directory – At a themed meeting earlier in the year, Sergeant John Hutchings came to speak to us about how to keep the community safe. Working with Merv the Board is putting together a directory and would be able to bring this to a future meeting next year.

Rights of Way event feedback – The Board held a themed session in Downton at the Memorial Hall, which was a very smart new space. This was a hot topic for people in this area, we heard from Head of Rights of Way, and have had positive feedback following the session. The Board would be repeating workshops like this next year.

Silver Salisbury Programme – This year this event was pushed out into the rural areas surrounding Salisbury, with some sessions being held in our community area. All along the theme of helping our older people get out more and access activities in the community to feel less lonely.

JSNA - Thanks to the 235 people that responded to the JSNA assessment. That was only 1% of our pop, but this would feed in to our other data.  The Board would be holding a JSNA event in April 2020.

The Chairman noted that he took great pleasure in the positive outcome, detailed in the youth activities report. The Board had been keen to support and fund these activities so it was great to hear they were appreciated by the young people.