Agenda item

The Committee received a report of the Corporate Director of Neighbourhoods and Climate Change that provided an update on the ongoing work of the ASB Strategic Group that included the final draft ASB Delivery Plan 2024-2025 (for copy see file of minutes).

The Head of Community Protection Services gave a presentation that detailed the key actions for the ASB Strategic Group for the year.  The ASB Strategy had been published and the ASB Strategic Group were to develop an action plan for the Safer Durham Board.  She explained what work had been carried out since the last update to committee.  Further work had been carried out on the Theory of Change (ToC) document and had been shared with members of the committee that highlighted the key action areas.  The final report had been submitted to the Partnership Board in March 2024 and would be implemented in April 2024.

The Head of Community Protection Services remarked how the plan fit in with the overarching three key priority areas that were signed off after the consultation ended but was subject to change. The main priority was focused on ASB with eight principles - working in Partnership; champion the victims’ voice; provide the best victim support; provide victim centric community trigger and community remedy processes; implement preventative measures; to make full use of the tools and powers and maximise use of digital technologies. The action plan concentrated on partnerships, people and places.  The rationale was shared at the last meeting to create quick wins at low cost that had high impact.  There were time limited projects that included safe street that was a trail blazer led by the PCC that was not in the delivery plan.  The focus was to strengthen partnership working at a local level that was important to meet the demands in an area that differed across the County.  Further work was required on the management framework to improve data sharing to develop dash boards. Sharing information was important but all data bases were different so there was talk of creating one system but that was limited due to resources.

The Head of Community Protection Services stated that work was to be carried out to establish how much partners spent to address ASB and what the return was on the investment as there was a need to understand the costs to the agency and evaluate them.  There was a requirement to limit court time as that was evidence based that needed lots of lead in time which could potentially result in the case not going to court.  Work was ongoing to ensure that partners had the right information and knowledge to sign post to the right people that would involve the development of training materials for joint working. There was work being carried out around public space protection orders as these also had to be started early to gather evidence. The Case Review System had been worked on for the last 12 months to capture feedback from victims to co-produce solutions. Working with victims was important as their experience was a way forward to learn and shape the services in the future. She added that work was to be developed with the community to produce a community charter to illustrate what was acceptable and what was not acceptable in an area to reduce community tolerance and increase the social norm for people to report incidents.

The Head of Community Protection Services explained that ASB overlapped with other strategies and work was ongoing to see how often low level crime escalated to more serious crime and dove tail work from the ASB side with an annual delivery plan although this was not set in stone and was continuously reviewed.  There was a proposal to present to the Board every six months as the information was more tangible.  It was also proposed to report to committee every six months rather than quarterly but the committee would still receive updates within the quarterly performance report.

Councillor D Sutton-Lloyd thanked the Head of Community Protection Services for the presentation.  He was interested in the community charter as there needed to be a game plan on how to engage with people.

Councillor L Hovvels also thanked the Head of Community Protection Services for the presentation that included a lot of information.  She referred to the collection of data using other methods like CCTV.  She queried if this was to advance to obtain mobile cameras and how progress would be made to broaden out the scheme. She thought this would help partners in doing their jobs and make community safer in hot spot areas.

The Head of Community Protection Services responded that CCTV was in the action plan and work was ongoing for a trail blazer with Police and Crime Commissioners Office. She confirmed that CCTV’s had been identified and resources had not.  There were two arms to this work - mobile CCTV work that was ongoing and the upgrading of existing CCTV cameras.  Work was also ongoing to identify where there where voids not covered by CCTV.

Councillor R Crute noted that Durham had mechanisms to report ASB but noted that there had been 280 reports in 10 months that were not from Durham County Council.  He queried if there were any Government mechanisms to trigger a response from the service to ASB reported incidents as he was unsure how these things worked and how far police development showed on a heat map.

The Head of Community Protection Services confirmed that there was independent organisational monitoring of ASB incidents especially with repeat offences.  There was a review trigger threshold that had worked last year to ensure responses were sent from the service.  She added that there were case reviews that brought partners round table to create a level of response that was positive.  From her service they took a business as usual approach and monitored where incidents came in from or if something was too difficult an existing trigger threshold was in place.

Resolved:

i)               That the report be noted.

ii)             That the proposed arrangements for receiving ASB update reports and performance management reports from April 2024 be agreed