Wirral MBC community safety gets a ‘fair’ rating from the Audit Commission. In other words that is a ‘could do better’, because the report speaks of a lack of clear aims, or assessment.
Why does it matter? As the report says: “The council has a duty under section 17 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 to consider crime and disorder in the discharge of all of its functions.” Practically speaking, youths hanging around shops when they should be at school; vandals, graffiti-artists and arsonists; all these people who cause day-by-day headaches for security staff can be dealt with by your local crime and disorder reduction partnership, that the council community safety department is a big part of. In Wirral, good work includes: “Council staff patrol 450 council buildings and provide a security service to schools, and also a general neighbourhood patrol to cover areas where anti-social behaviour has been reported. This has resulted in a significant reduction in vandalism and out-of-hours burglaries and a large number of incidents of youths causing annoyance were dealt with. The council has well-developed CCTV coverage which includes the major shopping areas. Portable cameras have been purchased …”
The report says: “There has been limited staff training for community safety within the council, with the last training for managers taking place over eighteen months ago, and no training for new and existing front-line staff. This is important to make sure that all staff have a good awareness of community safety issues and understand how they can contribute through their day to day work.”
The report does not speak of businesses being consulted to do with community safety. According to the report, ‘the public’s major concerns were vandalism, youth disorder and facilities for young people’, and graffiti.
To repeat, there is good work going on. The council housing department has specified that all council housing should be ‘secured by design’, that is, meeting Association of Chief Police Officers standards. However, the report points out that the council does not evaluate or set aims – ways to find out how effective its work is. The report says: “The review lacked information and criteria on which to judge efficiency – for example to establish the costs of the community patrol activity or making physical security improvements to homes in comparison to what the private sector might offer, or what other councils spent on similar functions. There was no assessment of the cost-effectiveness of CCTV.”
Similarly, the council did not consider outsourcing, for example community patrol or target hardening, or joint delivery with other local authorities or agencies.
