(a)

the Partnership had recently embarked on a period of review and development based on the principles of systems leadership (as recommended by the Fairness Commission).  As a result, Safer Plymouth members had agreed to move to a more dynamic and innovative way of working, working effectively together toward agree outcomes that benefitted Plymouth, irrespective of whether or not they were top priorities for individual organisations;

(b)

since 2006/07 there had been a long-term trend of reducing crime in the City; almost 9,500 less crimes altogether, and between April 2015 and August 2015 there had been 7,658 recorded crimes; representing a 3% reduction on the same period the previous year.

(c)

the new partnership approach would be more reactive, focusing on issues through ‘deep dive’ exercises as necessary, as opposed to the committee-style approach which was more meeting based and focused.  An example of a recent multi-agency event was a review of the Quality Inn following the latest arson incident.  Safer Plymouth had organized a well-attended public meeting represented by the Police, Planning, Fire, Public Health and Public Protection to hear and respond to the community’s views and respond to questions.  Following that meeting Safer Plymouth had continued to co-ordinate multi-agency action, including successful prosecution of the owner and was continuing to press the owner to fully resolve the situation;

(d)

spikes in crime could appear for many reasons and sometimes for no reason at all other than random, one-off incidents.  For example, in Greenbank last Saturday evening eight windows were taken out in one street.  Sector meetings would look at every crime which had taken place to determine whether they were repeats or part of a theme.  Whitleigh was one area which had been looked at where there was no apparent reason for the spike, this could be as a result of domestic abuse or other incidents taking place behind closed doors, including youth on youth or youth on adult incidents;

(e)

operationEncompas was still running, however, more publicity was required to promote the fact that it was still in existence as people seemed to think that it was not.  Concerns remained with data recording and dissemination as there were still issues in getting information to school by the next morning;

(f)

there was concern that the number of reported crimes was going down because of people’s lack of confidence in reporting crimes.  This had been the subject of discussion at last week’s meeting of the Police and Crime Panel, particularly the failings in the 101 service which had recently been reviewed by the Police and Crime Commissioner.  The review had resulted in a 12-point action plan which was due to be reported to the December meeting of the Police and Crime Panel;

(g)

the impending cuts to the police would, in the words of the Police and Crime Commissioner, be disastrous and result in a force and service which would be very different to that which we knew today;

(h)

Safer Plymouth continued to support the re-commissioning process for SARC services in Plymouth and were pleased to report that a further year’s contract had been awarded;

(i)

a successful application had been secured to close a legal high retailer in Cornwall Street which resulted in the retailer agreeing to cease selling legal highs immediately and pay costs.  A further prosecution in respect of a retailer in Ebrington Street was also being pursued and whilst it had been delayed on a technicality it was anticipated that the case would be in court within the next 21 days;

(j)

only 25% of policing was spent dealing with crime with the remaining 75% spent dealing with ‘other’ issues.  The proposed budget cuts would mean that there would have to be a move toward pushing things that were traditionally directed to the Police toward other agencies and work was already under way to achieve this, such as using the Fire Service to be aware of any safeguarding concerns when they enter people’s homes and training taxi drivers to be aware of and flag any concerns regarding CSE.