Make It Local: Making our communities safer

Government can deliver safe and strong communities through giving councils the right frameworks and resources by:

• adequately and directly funding Community Safety Partnerships’ vital contribution to local community safety work, clarifying roles and responsibilities within the complex community safety landscape, and providing clear guidance on effective working and identifying best practice approaches
• recognising the contribution of other council services in preventative, early intervention and disruption activity that supports community safety and security, and investing in them accordingly.

We know that crime is one of the issues that residents feel most strongly about. Almost a third (32 per cent) of people polled by YouGov[1] think that the government should spend more on crime and policing, with only the NHS and education/schools receiving more support for greater spending.

Forty one per cent of people polled[2] think anti-social behaviour is a big or fairly big problem in their area. The police recorded 1.2 million incidents of ASB in the year ending June 2022, but with research[3] suggesting that more than half of victims or witnesses to ASB do not report it, this could be a significant underestimate.

Most people reported encountering ASB in their town centre (48 per cent), park or playing area (36 per cent) or by their local shops (29 per cent); the most common experience of ASB was concerns about young people hanging about on the streets (59 per cent), followed by concerns about vandalism, criminal damage and graffiti.

The 2021/22 Community Life Survey[4] indicated that more than three quarters of people (76 per cent) are very or fairly satisfied with their local area as a place to live, while 84 per cent of respondents agreed that their area is a place where people from different backgrounds get along well together. 

However, there are variations in views and experience by region, age, rurality and levels of deprivation; as well as variations in patterns of crime and anti-social behaviour, with the types of issues that are prevalent varying across and within different types of areas, leading residents to have different experiences and views of where they live.

Whether local concerns relate to environmental crimes that spoil the local environment; anti-social behaviour that makes people wary of visiting certain places; burglary and doorstep crime; high rates of domestic abuse or serious violence in public places, councils and local partners are best placed to develop the right measures and solutions for their areas under the direction of elected representatives accountable to local residents - but they need the flexibility and resources to be able to do so.

The challenges for councils and local partners in ensuring that people feel safe, protected and confident in their communities have increased in recent years. New threats and issues such as county lines, rising levels of knife crime and serious violence, the impact of asylum and migration on community cohesion, increasing opportunities to target people through online and other scams, growing awareness of the prevalence of domestic abuse and concerns about anti-social behaviour have all impacted our communities.

At the same time, councils’ capacity for community safety and public protection work has reduced. Central funding for community safety partnerships has been withdrawn; reductions in local government funding have led to cuts in the early intervention family and youth services that can help tackle anti-social behaviour and prevent other crimes; and staffing in wider public protection services has been reduced, impacting councils’ ability to work to support reputable local businesses and tackle rogue and poorly performing traders.

Alongside that, the complexity of the community safety landscape has increased substantially, with the introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners, Violence Reduction Units in some areas, and a myriad set of new legislation and duties risking overlap and duplication as local places aim to address the community safety and public protection challenges in their areas.

A criminal justice response that increases funding for policing alone can never be the only route to tackling crime and anti-social behaviour and strengthening communities: long term, stable investment in community safety and early intervention will help to tackle the root causes of anti-social behaviour and criminality, improving lives for communities around the country. Beyond community safety, there are many factors that create successful communities where people feel safe and secure: economic opportunities and prosperity; decent housing and a clean and attractive environment; thriving and reputable businesses and good local amenities; and opportunities to come together, all contribute to stable and cohesive communities where people get on and can succeed in life. 

The solutions to issues that undermine the sense of safe and strong communities – whether they are anti-social behaviour and crime, community tensions or other challenges – require dedicated capacity and engagement with communities; and strong and effective partnerships between councils, the police, health, housing services, voluntary and community sector, businesses and others. These cannot be built overnight; and they cannot be developed or led centrally, only locally.

There may be some short term fixes to the visible manifestations of community safety issues; for example, removing graffiti, or rapidly responding to damage to property or the environment.  The Safer Streets Fund Round One evaluation found there were reports of very positive community responses to certain initiatives that improved the local environment (for example, removing graffiti, creating community gardens) and those which had helped to eliminate long-standing ‘problem areas’ raised by the community (for example, demolishing disused garages). These projects highlight the value of funding to support proactive measures, rather than relying on enforcement income to fund interventions.

However, measures effecting lasting changes in behaviour that reduce challenges and strengthen communities require long term investment in early intervention and prevention and a shift away from funding crisis interventions alone. For example, the “Turnaround” early intervention programme which is expected to support up to 20,000 more children in England and Wales, by helping youth offending teams focus on children who are teetering on the edge of criminality, to prevent them from spiralling into a career of crime. The programme is beginning to focus on children and young people who are repeat ASB offenders and can be referred by community safety partners for intervention

To address community safety, cohesion and public protection challenges, we need to get the basics right and lay the right foundations for councils to work with their local partners to support their communities. The solutions we seek in this area as a key first step are simple, rather than radical, and they are not new asks; but it is becoming increasingly important that they are addressed.

• There needs to be clarity, centrally and locally, about how the complex community safety landscape fits together.  Specifically, there needs to be better guidance on an effective working relationship between the Community Safety Partnership (CSP), the PCC and the relatively new introduction of Violence Reduction Units in 20 police force areas, as well as the introduction of Drug Partnership arrangements.
• There has been a myriad of new statutory duties placed on local authorities and CSPs to collaborate, for example the domestic abuse duty and the serious violence duty, with new requirements for needs assessments or single-issue strategies, which don’t seem to co-ordinate across the community safety landscape. Further new duties must complement existing legislation and be accompanied by the capacity and resources needed to deliver them – via a long-term sustainable strategy. 
• Central government should work to ensure better coordination on shared areas of interest across different departments. It should also switch its recent focus from the introduction of new duties and legislation to supporting local areas to understand how these fit together, identifying best practice locally and sharing it nationally.  Consideration should be given to whether and how overlapping duties could be streamlined and expectations about how different partnerships should work together in a system of equal partners clarified.
• With greater clarity must come adequate funding. CSPs no longer receive central Government funding, and are mainly reliant upon one-off grants, contributions from partners, and funding from the Police and Crime Commissioner. This is limiting the long-term impact they can currently have.  
• Improved funding for CSPs must ensure all areas are able to put basic foundations in place. Many local areas have highlighted the importance of strong partnership-working and data-sharing but feel challenged by the lack of resource and capacity, particularly to analyse data effectively. Funding should also support training and investment in staff.  
• There is also a need to recognise the contribution that a wide range of regulatory services can play in supporting community safety and public protection by tackling rogue traders and disrupting more serious criminality as part of their wider responsibilities, and invest in these services accordingly.
• We also need to invest in prevention and early intervention to tackle the root causes of anti-social behaviour, crime and undermine community cohesion.
• Better and earlier engagement with councils on issues that may disrupt community cohesion and safety, for example the dispersal of asylum seekers, recognising the importance of local intelligence and community insight.

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