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Tackling Crime (Plymouth)

As I pointed out in 2001 in one of a number of debates on crime, Plymouth was one of the earliest places to adopt a partnership approach to tackling crime, as recommended by the Morgan report. Many years on, that partnership work is now wider and deeper. It is embedded in the work of our local strategic partnership, Plymouth 2020, which has the vision that by 2020, our city will be recognised as""one of Europe's finest, most vibrant waterfront cities, where an outstanding quality of life is enjoyed by everyone"." Community safety and bearing down on crime are important parts of that. Since 1997, crime has fallen by 36 per cent. and violent crime is down by 40 per cent. nationally, although one would never know that from some of the stories in the national press. I do not usually read the Daily Mail, but I noticed yesterday that it focused only on the negative aspects and quoted figures as if there were no context of significant drops in crime. In Plymouth, the police authority, the basic command unit and their partners have used the Government's investment and policies to make us the fourth safest police authority area and one of the safest cities in the country. As well as celebrating that, I will focus on how the next Parliament can help us to continue down the strong direction of travel that we have established locally and nationally. Things have moved on since the 2001 debate. With neighbourhood renewal funding came the need to set up the local strategic partnership. For over seven years, it has worked on stretch targets set under the safer and stronger communities theme group that reports to the main board. Recently, the Audit Commission awarded Plymouth with a coveted green flag in the first comprehensive area assessment, which indicates""exceptional performance and innovation that other public services could learn from"." It was awarded for""the way partners in Plymouth plan ahead to protect people in the city during large scale emergencies."" The new Oneplace area assessment of local public services says that Plymouth is a safe place for most people and concludes:""The Council, Police, Primary Care Trust, Fire and Rescue Service, other public services, voluntary groups and businesses work extremely well together to plan ahead and respond to emergencies to keep the city safe."" That is reflected in the day-to-day work that has resulted in a drop in our crime figures. In the year to September 2009, crime was down by 9.6 per cent. compared with the previous year and in the first quarter of 2010, it was down by 11.7 per cent. compared with the same period in 2009. There are still challenges aplenty. Although there is a well established downward trajectory in crime over a number of years according to police recorded crime and the British crime survey, it does not always feel that way and certainly not to the victims of the crime that remains. The fear of crime remains stubbornly high, although people rate their local situation better than their perception of the country as a whole. Such fear is partly rooted in a belief that the steps to tackle crime are not travelling in the right direction, even though they clearly are. The police and the criminal justice system are not the only public services that face such perceptions. There is a wide disparity in the answers people give about the health service. When asked about their last experience of using the health service, most people say it was good, but when asked how the health service is doing generally, people usually think that it is travelling in the wrong direction, which it clearly is not. Lagging perceptions are not new. When I worked at the Gas Consumers Council in the 1990s, people commonly referred to the gas boards even though they had been done away with 25 years previously. That is perhaps not good news for the police, who have a target of enabling the public to feel confident and safe in their communities. Against the background of negative reporting, that is difficult to achieve. However, those involved are determined to do it in a realistic way by engaging people with what the police are doing to bring safety to local communities. Important in achieving that are the new tools being developed by neighbourhood police teams, which Plymouth has had for some time. Police and communities together, or PACT meetings are one good way of ensuring that the things that people in the community rate as important are tackled. Some neighbourhood police teams have gone further. The team that covers Stonehouse has gone from house to house in the last year to find out proactively what matters to people in the neighbourhood. That was part of and complemented by Operation Glendale, which was designed to roll back an upsurge in drug-related crime in the waterfront area of my constituency. It was a great success and all the more so for engaging with other partners in the strategic partnership. It helped to meet one of the key stretch targets in the work plan. It also led to a fall in acquisitive crimes because bearing down on drug-related crime has an impact on theft to fund drug use. Compared with the previous year, domestic burglaries were down 32.6 per cent., theft from motor vehicles 37.7 per cent. and the theft of vehicles 28.1 per cent. Although there has been an increase in serious violent crime, violent crime is down. Homicides have gone down from four in the previous year to one. Chief Inspector Andy Bickley stated that a change in the recording practice accounted for most of the increase in serious violent crime and offered the reassurance that it was not an indication that Plymouth was becoming a more violent place. At the last strategic partnership meeting I attended, the stretch target for the number of domestic violence incidents recorded by police was being discussed because it was not high enough. More active engagement was planned to ensure that more domestic incidents were reached. That is sensible because detection, along with seeing cases through to conviction, is a key factor in preventing crime. Of course, such work may have an adverse impact on the police recorded crime figures in the interim. The point of this debate is to acknowledge the success of what has been done and to look forward and consider what further tools could maintain the downward trend in crime. That becomes more difficult the more successful we are. I want to raise three points. First, there is a need to maintain front-line staff, including police community support officers. Secondly, there needs to be a whole community answer to alcohol abuse and related crime. Thirdly, I want to mention the Talents programme, which was developed in Plymouth and is a cost-effective way of producing results. On front-line staff and PCSOs, there used to be a big argument about getting officers out of cars and having bobbies back on the beat. We still discuss how to ensure that police officers and PCSOs are out and about for a high percentage of their time, but I have not heard the either/or argument about panda cars versus the beat for some time. That is thanks largely to the advent of PCSOs, who have become the eyes and ears of the neighbourhood team and trusted allies to people in communities who want to see change for the better. With the advent of neighbourhood policing, of which PCSOs are an important part, we have both/and, not either/or. My constituents and I worry that the pressures facing police authorities, including the added pressures arising from the pension obligation, will weaken what has been so recently established to such good effect. What measures does the Minister think are needed to ensure that police authorities are required to make administrative efficiency savings, while protecting front-line services? Police forces such as Devon and Cornwall have done some of that work effectively to ensure that front-line services can be developed. I hope that that will be recognised. A blend of carrots and sticks will be required to focus minds on the difficult times that lie ahead. I hope that he will give some pointers on how he thinks that will happen. I was pleased to hear that partners in our local strategic partnership are planning to share back-office and procurement costs on a scale that would not have been possible before we had the strategic partnerships that are now well embedded. That can and must be scaled up through multi-area agreements across local authorities, PCTs and police authority areas if our precious front-line services are to be protected. Having an alcohol policy is simply a no-brainer. I do not mean that in the sense that some people consider it a good thing to get drunk out of their skull at a weekend; I mean it in the sense of having effective policies to reduce demands on the health service, the police authority and much other public service spending. There is also, of course, a quality of life issue. A great deal of work has been undertaken by organisations and individuals in Plymouth to prevent and alleviate harm resulting from the use and abuse of alcohol. The challenge set out in the Government's "Safe. Sensible. Social. The Next Steps in the National Alcohol Strategy," which was published in 2007, is to minimise health harms, violence and the antisocial behaviour associated with alcohol, while ensuring that people are still able to enjoy alcohol safely and responsibly, as many people, of course, do. I have a sense that, despite the strategy, there is a need to give greater impetus to what is being done locally and nationally. If we are to bear down further on crime, it is important to deal with the matter correctly and, from what I know, it should not be rocket science to do so. We need to create cities and communities in which people who want to enjoy themselves can do so without damaging their own health or damaging the communities that suffer from antisocial behaviour. We also need to ensure that the health of individuals whom such people come across is not damaged. That includes far too many shop workers and public sector workers in the health and police services. I am a great admirer of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers "Freedom from Fear" campaign. However, we still need to get to grips with alcohol, because it is at the root of so much antisocial behaviour against public sector workers. Dealing with crime has to be as much about changing the culture of things as it is about conventional policing. As I said, doing so is not rocket science, but it requires the sort of joined-up national, regional and local approach that is essential if we are to preserve front-line services and meet the challenges that lie ahead. I would like to offer a solution to some of the taxing problems that we will face in the coming years, which will perhaps be part of the answer to the things that I have mentioned above and to many other things as well. Mr. James Webster, who until recently was Plymouth's police commander, looked to the Gospel according to St. Matthew to find inspiration from the parable of the talents—you will be familiar with that parable, Dr. McCrea. The landowner gave money to each of his servants, and urged them to make good use of it. Those who invested it made bigger returns and in turn earned more. Chief Superintendent Webster gave £500 to each of Plymouth's 11 neighbourhood sergeants to develop initiatives that would help to address crime and disorder priorities identified by local residents at PACT meetings. As with the landowner's servants, each sergeant had to account for what they had done with the money. The range of ideas was extraordinary—from a simple TV and video set-up showing policing information at two of the city's biggest supermarkets, to a fireworks scheme in an area of Devonport with an arson problem. There was also a street dance initiative, a boxing club, a football coaching scheme and a project that funded students themselves to develop community ideas. In a follow-on from the first Talents programme, neighbourhood teams linked with some of the Co-operative Society stores in the city to tackle the youth crime and disorder often associated with hanging around the communities' eight-til-late-type stores. That programme is in its 13th round. It has brought a whole new approach to policing and has released the full potential of some very talented people. When Mr. Webster was interviewed about the programme by Carl Eve, a reporter for The Herald in Plymouth, he said:""When I came to Plymouth, I quickly realised the very high calibre of staff we were now recruiting - much more than when I joined - but our rank structure hadn't changed…We were getting top-quality people but weren't making it easy for them to use the full range of their abilities. They have massive powers on the street - they can arrest people or break down doors - but they don't have the power to authorise expenditure of a £10 note."" He said that policing procedures "strangled innovation" at street level and that officers complained that, if they could only get funding for an idea, they could achieve better results. Just like in the parable, Mr. Webster gave them that opportunity. He allowed them to be creative, but insisted that there should be a return. Officers have in fact turned £500 into £20,000 or £30,000 projects. They have created long-term community assets and generated good will from members of the community involved. The Home Office has supported the initiative, and £55,000 of the national partnership improvement fund money has been awarded to the city's strategic partnership, to develop the idea across the entire partnership. In the difficult times that lie ahead, we should perhaps take heed of what the programme's author says about it:""If I had £20,000, I could buy a new police car, but its impact would be very little. Put £20,000 into the community, from the grass roots up, and I can do a lot more with it…Once you allow officers the power and responsibility they can do far more than you ever would if you just directed them. It's inspiring and humbling to see people fired up. People join the police to do great things."" The Talents model gives a structure to seek funding, and to create leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship in the fight against crime in Plymouth. Indeed, it is a practical working model for partnerships for and with other public services that deliver at a community level. Our further education provider—the City college—is now delivering a course designed to empower front-line staff in public services to use the model. Public services, including the fire service, are indeed using the model. I am pleased to have had the chance to talk about some positive things in relation to tackling crime in Plymouth. I hope that the Minister, as well as joining me in acknowledging some of the good work being done and thanking those who work so hard to deliver good public services, will point the way to how we can go even further in bearing down on crime in Plymouth and elsewhere.