New year is the crunch time of year for local government, when councils set budgets. Much of local government is broke; councils as large as Birmingham and Nottingham have had commissioners appointed by central government, to check their spending. Where does this leave councils’ community safety responsibilities, and opportunities for security contractors? Mark Rowe asks.
Security and indeed any contractors like working for councils (or schools, or the National Health Service) because the public sector are relatively good payers, which is good for cash flow (the British state is not likely to go bust, compared with customers in say, the pub trade). That doesn’t mean working for councils is smooth; one guarding contractor with origins in door security recalled their first, key-holding, council contract, when the incumbent contractor, whether due to lack of competence or out of spite, handed over the keys by pouring them onto a table.
A previous Labour government in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 placed a responsibility on local government to combat crime; and created anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs). Both responsibilities are still going strong, though ASBOs have new names. Among the most visible examples are ‘safe buses’, a typical sight in city centres. Briefly, councils and partners fund and staff a bus to cover peak weekend demand from night-goers, whether for a place to seek first aid, or refuge. ‘Safe Square’ in Sheffield for example in Barkers Pool, open from 10:30pm to 4am, was available over Christmas and New Year. Also confirmed are dates in early 2026, including pay day weekends in January, February and March, the weekend before St Patrick’s Day and the April Bank holiday weekend.
Litter fines
Such buses provide services – such as flip-flops for women on a night out whose high heels have failed, or water for the dehydrated – and take pressure off 999 services. Community safety is also about enforcement. To stay with Sheffield, its city council has been employing temporary or agency staff to carry out littering enforcement. It reports that income from litter fines (Fixed Penalty Notices, FPNs in the jargon) was around £50,000 a year; significantly less than the cost of employing staff to issue those notices.
Hence an initial one-year agreement by Sheffield with neighbouring Doncaster council, whereby each will hire Waste Investigations Support & Enforcement Ltd (WISE) to issue fines for litter and dog fouling offences; environmental crimes in the jargon; as used similarly by nearby Rotherham Metropolitan Borough, North Lincolnshire, and North-East Lincolnshire councils. Councillor Joe Otten, Chair of the Environmental Services and Regulation Policy Committee at Sheffield City Council, said: “We are carrying out our statutory duties to improve our local environment all the time and whilst most residents do not drop litter and the great majority of dog owners do clear up after their dogs, there still need to be a strong enforcement response to tackle the minority that do not. The cost of clearing litter can be considerable and that is money and resource that would be better directed elsewhere. We’re hopeful that this one-year pilot will be successful and will monitor it closely over the next year.”
Reading and Rushcliffe
Another contractor in this market is an arm of the services firm Kingdom, who last year reported work with Reading Borough Council against littering and fly-tipping. Karen Rowland, Lead Councillor for Environmental Services and Community Safety in Reading, spoke of how the council ‘annually receives a myriad of complaints about littering and fly tipping from our law-abiding residents’. In other words, ‘clean’ streets is on local government’s plate.
Rushcliffe Borough Council last year carried on contracting with WISE; Rushcliffe, outside Nottingham, was the first council to hire WISE, in 2021. The council’s Cabinet Portfolio Holder for Environment and Safety Rob Inglis said: “Fly-tipping, littering and dog mess is a real frustration for residents nationally and we want to play our part with WISE to deter and reduce it as much as possible in Rushcliffe. The partnership has to date been very effective, making good inroads into actions, fines and prosecutions and deters fly-tippers and those who litter or allow their dog to foul public places.”
Merseyside-based WISE Managing Director John Dunne said: “We operate a robust but always proportionate methodology to tackle environmental crime, using a wide range of technical support including wireless body worn cameras and a handheld computer which will confirm the identity of an alleged offender before issuing a fixed penalty notice.”
Knives
WISE provides ASB officers in Bedford for Bedford Borough Council to address antisocial behaviour. This includes regular patrols of hotspot areas, engagement with residents and businesses, and weapons sweeps. WISE stresses weapon bins, and reducing the availability of weapons in public spaces; rather than (for the police) capturing those with knives.
Public realm
What then of wider crime? For that, too, residents will look to their local council, and not only or necessarily the police, if the crimes and nuisances are of a street-scene nature. As one west Londoner complained recently of Uxbridge Road, in the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, ‘parking restrictions ignored, filthy streets, litter, unused phone boxes, addiction, drug dealing, messy shop fronts’. As the (Labour-led) council responded in its defence, it has a Law Enforcement Team (LET) that patrols that road daily; and 2000 public space CCTV cameras, besides ‘public realm improvements’ such as deep cleaning pavements, and removing fly-posters and graffiti.
ASB forms
A motion put to the city council in December by Sheffield Labour councillor and deputy leader of the council Fran Belbin sums up why local government does community safety (Sheffield is run by three parties: Labour, Lib Dem and Greens). Too many have their lives blighted by anti-social behaviour (ASB); ASB takes many forms, including intimidating behaviour, harassment, vehicle nuisance, drug dealing, excessive noise, vandalism and graffiti; and ASB often increases when it is linked to criminal or sexual exploitation; for example ‘cuckooing’, where criminals (such as, we might add, drug dealers) effectively take over someone’s home.
The motion recognised ‘14 years of cuts to services have diminished resources during rising demand’; significantly, the motion went on to suggest that not only resources matter, but ‘residents need clear pathways to report ASB, not a system where cases bounce between teams or stall without resolution’.
She acknowledged that responsibilities around ASB involve police, council services and ‘wider partners’. And she called among other things for ‘modern reporting tools that support consistent evidence gathering and an improved customer experience’. As a council resolution in July noted, a ‘Clear, Hold, Build’ operation in Woodhouse is disrupting organised crime, and involves partnership working.
Economic
Community safety matters to councils like all society because of the link with economic well-being. As Hammersmith and Fulham’s Cabinet Member for Public Realm, Florian Chevoppe-Verdier put it in a recent council report, ‘high street closures lead to reduced community cohesion, increased crime, and economic stagnation. Vacant shops and neglected public spaces diminish civic pride and safety, while the loss of local businesses erodes social interaction and cultural identity. Economically, high street decline depresses property values, reduces local tax revenues, and discourages investment, creating a cycle of deprivation’.
Tools
As for what tools councils have to tackle crime and promote ‘safer communities’, to use more jargon, one is public space protection orders (PSPOs), around since a 2014 Act of Parliament, made usually for three years to cover a specific area – whether a park against dog fouling, or a town centre against nuisances. Increasingly, councils are setting borough-wide PSPOs, though that throws up the question of how they’ll be enforced. In north London, for instance, Camden council has gone out to consultation about a borough-wide PSPO against people causing alcohol-related anti-social behaviour in public spaces. The borough has such draws as Camden Market and railway termini Euston and Kings Cross-St Pancras; and it’s proposed the order would include Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill.
Who enforces
Who would enforce a PSPO, and how? Or can a council have ‘safer streets’ without fining offenders (who may not have the means to pay) or resorting to the criminal justice system (which comes with costs and has capacity limits). A recent S12 webinar went over the CSAS (community safety accreditation scheme) that, even its advocates will acknowledge, has not had as much take-up as it might have, nigh on 20 years after it began. But CSAS powers and the required vetting and training may not be necessary for some of the public space, community safety work by councils.
Photo by Mark Rowe: Fulham.
