Safer Kirklees - Kirklees Community Safety Partnership

The Kirklees Community Safety Partnership brings together the Council, Police, Fire and Rescue Authorities, Kirklees Neighbourhood Housing, Clinical Commissioning Groups and Probation services including the Community Rehabilitation Company. Our Partnership will be striving for greater collaboration with community organisations, public sector partners and businesses to connect ideas,people and resources to enable us to be working together to tackle crime and community safety.

Kirklees partnership plan

Safer Kirklees is the name of our Community Safety Partnership. The 1998 Crime and Disorder Act and other subsequent legislation places a statutory duty on Community Safety Partnerships to develop a strategic plan which addresses multi-agency issues affecting the quality of life for residents.

Strategic themes

In summary, there are four main themes we will be focusing on from 2018-2021:

Improving Confidence and Satisfaction

Issues

People generally recognise that crime and ASB are falling although there needs to be a continued focus on the issues that impact of feelings of safety such as environmental issues and issues such as road safety. Research from the Home Office has shown that the impact of telling people about a community safety intervention is almost as effective as the intervention itself and so needs to be an integral part of our approach.

How we plan to tackle these issues

  • Develop communication plan to embed Safer Kirklees brand to showcase partnership success through messages to communities both through traditional / social media and by word of mouth
  • Area based work to provide individually tailored interventions based on levels crime / ASB and perceptions for each area.
  • Development of a community safety calendar relating to risks and opportunities at key times of the year
Preventing and reducing crime

Issues

Crime has fallen significantly in the past decade although recent changes to the ways in which crimes are recorded by all police forces have resulted in a recent spike in offences. Other theft and violent crime are now the two highest offence types. Although it has fallen significantly, in comparison with other areas, Domestic Burglary is proportionately higher than in other similar areas nationally.

How we plan to tackle these issues

  • Strong focus on crime prevention through tactics including increase awareness, target hardening and secured by design approaches.
  • Increased deterrent presence in emerging hot spots through deployment of partnership staff and community resources including neighbourhood watch.
  • Offender focus through the delivery of the reducing reoffending strategy, the integrated offender management model and addressing risk factors including drugs and alcohol.
Tackling anti-social behaviour

Issues

Although the definition of anti-social behaviour (ASB) covers a wide variety of behaviours, the PSIA breaks this into that categorised as personal, nuisance and environmental.

How we plan to tackle these issues

Through the delivery of the Kirklees ASB Strategy, there will be a focus on preventing and reducing ASB through;

  • Community Engagement to ensure ASB is not tolerated and is tackled through active citizenship
  • Training and development for front line officers and community contacts to ensure they deal with ASB at the earliest possible opportunity through community resolution and warnings
  • Effective use of tools and powers and area based problem solving approaches to address persistent ASB
  • Effective links to more specialist services to deal with underlying issues such as mental health and substance misuse
  • Where necessary, efficient and effective prosecution to ensure people are held to account for their actions and to provide a message that such behaviours will not be tolerated
Protecting people from serious harm

Issues

There are a number of areas identified in the PSIA which span across the community safety partnership and other boards / strategies such as safeguarding for adults and children. These areas include;

  • Child Sexual Exploitation
  • Domestic Abuse
  • Female Genital Mutilation
  • Forced Marriage
  • Hate crime - see our Hate incident reporting
  • Human Trafficking
  • Preventing Violent Extremism and Community Tensions - see our Prevent

For these areas, it is vital that there is effective co-ordination (both strategically and operationally) to protect people from harm as early as possible and use a range of tools and powers to disrupt and target perpetrators as rigorously as possible.

As well as these safeguarding areas, protecting people from serious harm also incorporates other areas of significant risk including people being killed and seriously injured in road traffic collisions / house fires and preventing health related consequences of sustained substance misuse.

How we plan to tackle these issues

  • Improve strategic co-ordination between boards and strategies
  • Focus on preventing harm at the earliest opportunity - including improved victim confidence to report issues and support provided to them.
  • Front line workers and communities alert to the signs of abuse and confident to report issues
  • Effective operational links between partners to ensure there is effective case management in place both to ensure offenders are held to account for their actions and victims are appropriately safeguarded.

Strategies and plans

Strategic intelligence assessment (SIA)

The Partnership Strategic Intelligence Assessment (PSIA) pulls together a wide range of data sources relating to crime, anti-social behaviour, environmental issues and substance misuse alongside perceptions information concerning public confidence and reassurance. The PSIA considers the changing socio-economic and demographic profile of Kirklees to contextualise some of the community safety hotspots in the district.

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