Agenda item

To consider a report by the Community Safety Manager (copy enclosed) which outlines the activity of the Conwy and Denbighshire Community Safety Partnership during 2023/24 and seeks the Committee’s observations on its performance and its future objectives.

10.10am – 10.40am

The Lead Member for Housing and Communities, introduced the report (previously circulated) and explained that the Community Safety Partnership was a statutory body and as such was required to report to Scrutiny on at least an annual basis. The Lead Member extended his gratitude to the Community Safety Partnership’s Manager, for the production of the report as well as being so attentive to the Partnership’s objectives. The Lead Member also welcomed Chief Inspector, David Cust form North Wales Police to the meeting. Head of Service: Performance, Digital & Assets advised the Committee that the report circulated was a statutory report and stressed the importance of the Partnership along with the significance and benefits of all partners working together.

The Community Safety Partnership (CSP) Manager briefly went through the report and went on to explain the highlights. Three priorities were highlighted when discussing the overall Community Safety Partnership Activity Performance summary and it was noted that these priorities were multi-faceted. At the end of March 2024, performance in relation to two areas of these priorities were good, and one was acceptable. It was noted that there was an increase in theft, and this was different to what had been seen in previous years but ultimately this was not worse but remained acceptable.

It was noted that Priority 1- Reduce Crime and Disorder in the area by working in Partnership, had a statutory aim which was to be more effective without partners duplicating their efforts. The main focus of this objective was to support vulnerable people and reduce the number of victims of anti-social behaviour.

Priority 2- work collectively to reduce reoffending.  Performance against this priority during 2023/24 had been assessed as ‘Acceptable’ in comparison to being ‘Good’ in the previous year.  The main aims of this priority was to work to prevent children and young people from becoming victims of crime, prevent adults reoffending and work collectively to prevent organised crime.  Work has been done alongside the Youth Justice Service (YJS) as well as Mental Health Services with Children and Young People in relation to prevention in this area. Analytical work had been undertaken in relation to knife crime in a bid to reduce such incidents. Hotspots had also been looked at which meant that the Partnership would going forward be able to target these areas more effectively.

Priority 3- local and regional priorities.  Performance against this priority remained good. With the use of hotspots, the partnership was able to make a positive change with a focus on prevention and not criminalising young people. There was also a lot of work now being done collectively in relation to sharing information with all partners in relation to County Lines activity.  An information sharing group had recently been set up that met on a monthly basis. Chief Inspector, David Cust, advised the Committee that this Group was key in supporting effective partnership working. Previously, partners had been reluctant to share such private information but it was now evident that the sharing of information realised many benefits for the communities.

The CSP Manager proceeded to discuss the priorities and focus for the 2024/25 year, detailing performance and project/activity. When discussing the aim of reducing crime and disorder, the “We Don’t Buy Crime” initiative was noted for its execution. This initiative included encouraging people to sign up to “Community Report” and to be more aware of where they placed high value items in their homes and where retailers displayed high value goods e.g. away from the doors. This work had notable positive impacts and it was stated that the aim was to maintain this level of interaction with the communities.

Events were organised by the CSP throughout the year in order to maintain engagement and were advertised widely through social media. In addition, specific events that focussed around issues such as modern-slavery, anti-terrorism, White Ribbon Day to raise awareness of Domestic Abuse to the communities were also held and advertised widely. Crime prevention advice was also offered to contribute and support these campaigns. It was noted that it had been a busy year with no additional  funding available to support these events, but the Partnership worked collectively to deliver these events nonetheless.

Whilst incidents of adult reoffending had increased slightly in Denbighshire there had been a marked increase in Conwy, work was underway to try and address this trend. The CSP Manager noted that work that had been conducted on the prevention side of reoffending with efforts made with the Youth Justice Service Management Board. A step change was seen over the previous 12 months and the work was beginning to reap dividends. The primary aim was to help Young Justice Management and young people to prevent youths offending. This collaboration had always worked well but had started working more effectively during the last 12 months. The CSP Manager noted that the Rhyl Forum had continued to work diligently to try and change the misinformation and address the misconceptions about Rhyl. This was an ongoing project in Rhyl.

The Chief Inspector advised the Committee that the Clear Hold Build project was a Home Office backed initiative to improve the local environment and consequently reduce crime levels.  As a result of this project lots of resources had been put into the west end of Rhyl which included various programmes to support residents to build their vision of the community they wanted to live in, supporting social media messaging of community events and measures taken to reduce anti-social behaviour in the west of Rhyl and to reduce false information. Work was ongoing to reduce crime levels as part of Serious Violence Duty strategy. The Home Office was supportive of specific projects aimed at reducing anti-social behaviour (ASB) and knife crime – this was viewed as a real step forward.

The impact of domestic abuse was beginning to be taught in schools in order to raise awareness of this behaviour to pupils at a young age. The “Don’t Steal My Future” initiative had been introduced and the age for raising awareness of it had been lowered and tailored to a Year 6 pupils. The aim of this programme was to let children know there was support available should they need it if they were experiencing any form of domestic abuse. Specialist training has been provided to those who presented this programme to children and young people to help and support them to have those difficult conversations and in an attempt to help them identify unacceptable behaviour towards others, such as those advocated by some social media ‘influencers’.  Funding had been secured from the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) to support this initiative.  This meant that officers would visit all schools in the county for the purpose or awareness raising.  Other school initiatives were discussed throughout the meeting.

The discussion was then opened up for questions.  In response to members’ questions the Lead Members and officers:

·       advised that a lot of services were involved with various partnership working initiatives e.g. Licensing, Trading Standards, Children and Youth Services, Fire & Rescue Service, Probation Service, Public Health Wales (PHW), Police, Domestic Abuse regional teams etc.  All work done was cross-cutting and involved almost all departments in the authority which ensured a multi-agency and multi-faceted approach towards delivering community safety.

·       with respect to the criminal activities such as County Lines in North Wales the Chief Inspector advised that there were active Organised Crime Groups (OCG) in larger towns. Cuckooing was referred to as a major problem throughout the County. This entailed County Line criminals embedding themselves into vulnerable people’s homes and using these homes as headquarters for drug dealing. With a view to preventing such practices vulnerable people were able to give spare keys to the properties to Police Officers and then they attend the property to check on these individuals. It was advised that at present approximately 200 guardian checks were taking place on a regular basis. County Lines activities had been discovered during these visits. The Fire & Rescue Service were also briefed on these procedures so the whole partnership was aware and able to combat these criminal occurrences.

·       with respect to criminal activity in Rhyl, such as the growing of cannabis in the area and the fact that one group had actually manged to grow a lot of cannabis undetected and how the partnership was combatting this, the Chief Inspector responded that information sharing was key in order to detect and eliminate such activities.  Hr referred to an information sharing partnership which the Police had with electricity suppliers as well as the use of drones in order to try to identify empty properties sold to organised crime groups. It was noted that OCGs employed sophisticated and effective operating practices and were very good at staying undetected with the use of carbon fitters on vents and exploitation of vulnerable people to eliminate sight of people coming and going from their properties. 

·       advised that policing areas spanned the Conwy and Denbighshire county boundary and therefore intelligence and local information picked up in the West of Rhyl as well as in Pensarn, Towyn and Kinmel Bay were shared with partner organisations regularly. Concern over tourists in these areas and whether people were moving between Rhyl and Conwy to sell drugs were always investigated as were reports of unauthorised or illegal use of caravan sites and tourist areas. Similar types of community engagement work to that occurring in Rhyl West also occurred along the Conwy border as well as officers going into these caravan parks to target and prevent anti-social behaviour.

·       the impact of the recently introduced early release from prisons scheme was yet unknown.  However the CSP will monitor the impact of the early release scheme via the probation member on the CSP and raise any issues highlighted by them in the Internal Denbighshire County Council Community Safety senior leadership meeting chaired by the Corporate Director:  Governance and Business

·       with regards to the comparison of crime statistics between 1998, when the CSP was established, and 2024 members were advised that crime numbers had reduced dramatically but also changed.  New ‘types of crime’ such as County Lines, on-line crimes such as fraud and hate crime had come to the fore and were on the increase. Comparing statistics from over 25 years ago was also difficult as things that were acceptable e.g. types of domestic violence were not acceptable now and this would explain the change in different crime rates.

·       by accessing Levelling Up Funding a new CCTV system had been installed in Denbigh and all cameras in other towns which already had CCTV were now either brand new or less than three years old, which meant that the cameras could provide better quality footage, thus allowing the CSP to do more. The Lead Member was the chair the CCTV Partnership Board which comprised of from Rhyl, Prestatyn, Rhuddlan and now Denbigh Town Councils. The Board held bimonthly meetings where those Councillors report back to their Town Council. During the quarter from 1^st January to 31^st March North Wales Police had accessed images from those cameras on 59 occasions. Whilst the cameras were still currently being monitored in Chester the CCTV monitoring contract was due for review.  This review may result in the new contract stipulating that any future provider would have the to be able to monitor common systems between Denbighshire and Conwy and this would support North Wales Police in having easier and quicker access to the footage they needed and would strengthen the Partnership.

·       it was confirmed that the new Youth Centre on Rhyl promenade had made a positive contribution towards reducing youth crime in the area.  It was an extremely useful venue to enable officers to engage and communicate with young people in a relaxed, less formal environment.  It provided the youths with a safe space. The Chief Inspector advised that the centre has had a major impact on extending the work of the Youth Service which was now being expanded to Prestatyn. With facilities such as the Youth Centre, Police Officers were able to go in and liaise with individuals to see what they needed and what improvements were required etc.

·       confirmed that the yellow cards system was still in operation for incidents of youth ASB.  It was used as a deterrent and a warning that continued ASB behaviour would result in a criminal record.

·       advised that crime rates in rural areas as well as theft of agricultural goods were  included within the report under the statistics for general theft. “We Don’t Buy Crime” initiative was mentioned and stated that this tackled rural crime by giving smart water packs to farmers in agricultural areas this enabled them to mark their goods with yellow fluorescent deterrent marks that should make the equipment less attractive to would be thieves as it would be possible to track a piece of equipment to its original owner.  There was a dedicated Rural Crime Unit within North Wales Police that regularly liaised with farmers and residents in rural communities. With regards to the use of drones to ‘patrol’ rural areas the Committee was advised that strict regulations were in place with regards to the use of drones in order to protect the privacy of individuals, therefore drones could only be flown and used under strict guidelines and for specific purposes.

Members thanked the Lead Member, CSP Manager and Chief Inspector for the presentation as well as all the hard work and enthusiasm that they demonstrated towards their work and keeping residents and communities safe.  The Chair indicated that members may wish in future to invite the Police and Crime Commissioner to a future meeting to discuss his vision for the future.  As the Chief Constable was due to attend a Council Workshop session in the near future it was suggested that a request to invite the PCC to a future meeting be deferred until after the Chief Constable’s visit to the Authority.  At the conclusion of an in-depth discussion the Committee:

Resolved:  subject to the above observations to –

(i)             receive the Conwy and Denbighshire Community Safety Partnership’s Annual Update report on its activities during 2023/24;

(ii)           congratulate the Partnership on its performance during 2023/24 and endorse its objectives and priority areas for 2024/25 as outlined in the report.