< Previous | Contents | Next >

Threads of Success Executive Summary

Future Action - Threads of Success

Through discussions with the five partnerships who participated in the study it became clear that there were a number of recommendations they would like to see developed as a direct result of the emerging local and national actions.

Full details of the recomendations are listed below. Recomendations no's 1-8 reflect the eight local recomendations and recommendations no's 9-14 relate to the six national recommendations

In light of the Pathfinder Study and the Accounts Commision investigation the Local Authority Chief Executive and the Chief Constable (Divisional Commanders in larger forces) in liaison with Health and Fire, should undertake the Accounts Commision self assessment review to assess the strength of current local arrangements for community safety partnership working. In particular the review should:

ensure all senior partners are committed to the partnership

re-affirm or adopt the three tier partnership structure

ensure the Senior, Operations and Task Groups have sufficiently senior chairs to deliver the tasks which have been prioritised

ensure the regularity of senior partners' meetings

establish clear lines of accountability and responsibility

The Local Authority Chief Executive and Chief Constable (Divisional Commander in larger forces) in liaison with Health and Fire, should review arrangements for providing dedicated support for the partnership. This should be undertaken as part of the review of partnership foundations set out in Recommendation 1. Where no such support currently exists the Senior Partners should explore ways of establishing such support as a matter of priority. Where dedicated support exists Senior Partners should satisfy themselves that the support is adequate to enable the partnership to undertake the scale of preventive work that needs to be done.

Senior Partners, led by the Local Authority Chief Executive and the Chief Constable (Divisional Commander in larger forces) should open a dialogue on securing sustained, mainstream funding for community safety, particularly in light of the power of community initiative, and set up the necessary steps to:

i secure dedicated staff support for community safety partnership working

ii review current expenditure which is directly and indirectly related to community safety (to gain an understanding of the scale of current expenditure, its distribution and areas which would potentially benefit from community safety investment)

iii undertake a local costs of crime assessment (to identify priorities and potential savings)

iv explore invest-to-save programmes by asking partners to identify areas where investment would create preventive savings (eg criminal damage vs repair and maintenance expenditure; youth outreach work vs youth offending expenditure)

Sustained funding for community safety should be a standing item on Senior Partners' meeting agendas.

Local community safety partnerships need to undertake a community safety audit (see Diagrams I and II of Figure 5 page 30) which includes an element of joint planning, anticipates future trends in community safety and seeks preventive solutions. Partnerships should follow the guidance set out in 'Safer Communities in Scotland' (Scottish Executive, 1999) and 'Safe and Sound' (Accounts Commision, 2000). Once an information system has been established, the partnerships should regularly update information within the system. (minimum quarterly). To overcome barriers to conducting an audit, Senior and Operational Partners should consider:

i establishing a time-limited task group, comprising up to six appropriately skilled staff, whose purpose is to:

• identify useful community safety related information already being gathered by partners and bring that information together (minimum, quarterly)
• translate the highlights into 'community safety signposts'

ii using the 'community safety signposts' to prepare a preventive community safety strategy and performance targets for the locality

iii establishing an information system, possibly through the Community Planning Team, where reliable community safety information can be regularly collated and shared.

iv establishing two mechanisms to tackle immediate community safety problems, namely:

• requiring 'immediate community safety problems' to be a standing agenda item for Senior and Operational Partner meetings
• creating a 'local service response network' e.g. one middle manager from each partner who is tasked with managing and resolving immediate problems and who provides a single contact point for others in the network

v ensuring that partners understand the distinction between data-sharing and data protection and establishing local community safety protocols where necessary.

Local community safety partnerships should develop a community safety communication and training programme as a core component of the community safety strategy. That programme should include:

i internal presentations and/or training for Elected Members, senior managers, middle managers and front-line staff for each partner's services

ii joint training and networking across partners for senior managers, middle managers and front-line staff

iii establishing local operational community safety networks which bring together service managers, area Police Inspectors and other appropriate service delivery partners to

• tackle immediate community safety matters and local operational issues arising from joint working
• build a network of local community safety contacts with businesses and community organisations
• identify longstanding community safety issues and feed them through into the Operational Partners Group for problem-solving

iv communication and consultation with community organisations, voluntary organisations, private sector companies, the general public and the local media

Local community safety partnerships should take the necessary steps to:

i establish community safety as a core theme for community planning, social inclusion partnerships and community regeneration partnerships

ii ensure where appropriate, drug action plans, children's services plans, criminal justice plans, housing improvement programmes, health improvement plans, inward investment plans, economic development plans, road and transport safety, fire safety, water safety and home safety plans reflect community safety priorities and are integrated into the local community safety strategy

iii regularly scrutinise work on community safety as a core theme and the contribution to community safety being made through other related action plans (minimum annually)

All community safety partners should bring forward proposals to the Senior Partners' Group setting out the steps being taken within each partners' services and organisation to:

i mainstream preventive community safety in service planning, development and delivery

ii measure progress in mainstreaming preventive community safety action and expenditure

These proposals should be considered and agreed by the Senior Partners' Group, incorporated into the partnership's community safety strategy and have performance reported annually to both Partner's Management and the Senior Partners' Group.

In particular, each Chief Officer or Head of Service should be required to prepare a preventive community safety action plan which:

i reviews current service delivery and expenditure for its contribution to preventive community safety

ii adopts preventive community safety as a core 'Best Value' for the service

iii sets out how preventive community safety will be integrated into service planning, development and expenditure and cascaded to staff

iv identifies service priority areas for improving preventive community safety, including the actions to be undertaken, allocation of responsibilities, resourcing and performance measures.

Local community safety partnerships should embed target setting, monitoring and evaluation into all aspects of their community safety work to enable them to assess and demonstrate sustained improvements in community safety. In particular, Senior Partners should take the following steps:

i use the performance management framework outlined in the Accounts Commision bulletin on performance measurement for community safety partnerships including:

• setting performance indicators for their community safety programme by drawing upon the basket of performance indicators proposed by the Accounts Commision
• establishing supplementary local indicators for each part of the strategy and programme
• measuring the milestones towards a stronger partnership in terms the five key local issues, namely:
• partnership building, structures, membership, support and resources
• auditing, joint planning and forward-thinking preventive community safety
• communicating the community safety message
• mainstreaming community safety in its connections to strategic plans, in service action plans and in re-aligning expenditure to support preventive community safety
• establishing a performance management system embedded within the overall community safety partnership and strategy

ii ensure preventive community safety is adopted across all services as a core component of the 'Best Value' process; that community safety targets are set as part of each relevant 'Best Value' review and that progress is reported every six months to the partnership

The Scottish Executive should consider

Strengthening the national community safety strategy, recognising the breadth of local community safety priorities

Identifying the Local Authority Chief Executive and the Chief Constable as having lead responsibility for establishing a local partnership, and in liaison with Health and Fire develop a local preventive community safety strategy

Setting timescales for the completion of community safety plans

Annually reviewing and assessing the impact of local community safety action plans

Compiling a schedule of funding options available to inter-agency community safety plans, including the existing challenge funds

To help overcome confusion and logistical difficulties over data-sharing, the Scottish Executive, COSLA and ACPOS should assess the potential of inter-agency 'datashare' models (perhaps linked to other corporate information e.g. community planning information) to produce reasonable, reliable and robust information on which community safety priorities can be set locally and performance consistently assessed and compared nationally.

The national agencies should also consider issuing national guidance which sets out what information can and cannot be used in building an information database and provide a set of draft protocols as examples of good practice in the sharing of sensitive information e.g. victims, sex offenders etc. between partners.

The Scottish Executive, COSLA and ACPOS jointly consider the following steps on supporting partnership development and sharing credible practice:

i continuing the post of Scottish Community Safety Co-ordinator to provide sustained support and problem-solving advice to partnerships; encourage the sharing of credible practice across local partnerships and to act as a national contact point for improved performance and effective delivery

ii establishing an on-line support and advice service (in the form of a web database) which posts a national database on credible practice in community safety. This site could also link to existing relevant other agency web sites.

In recognition of the national and local priority for community safety, the Scottish Executive, COSLA and ACPOS should maintain and extend their support for and involvement in developing community safety training, knowledge and skills within and between partners and consider setting up a joint time-limited task group to:

commission a training needs assessment for local community safety partnerships

bring forward recommendations on building a national community safety training programme to meet the growing and varying needs of senior and operational partners

develop and provide training and skills development materials which can be used locally by partners and partnerships for individual agency and joint agency training

link with the National Criminal Justice Training Organisation occupational standards and accredited community safety training programmes

and in the interim to:

continue the existing joint training programme and extend it to cover front-line policy officers

encourage community safety awareness training in the 'induction training' of new Police, Fire, Health and relevant Council Service staff.

provide, in conjunction with the Scottish Police College, an additional course on the development of effective, preventive community safety strategies for senior officers from all partners

The Scottish Executive should consider taking stock and 'streamlining' the various funding sources made available in support of the broad definition of community safety. Eg. Funding arrangements for Drugs, Social Inclusion, Rural, Domestic Abuse, Children's Services etc.

The Scottish Executive should consider setting up a time-limited task group to:

review the planning cycles of the key public agencies, Council, Police, Fire and Health and assist in the co-ordination of

• timescales of producing strategic documents
• financial planning
• performance monitoring reviews

review policy, practice and funding programmes to maximise preventive work on community safety

identify and remove disincentives where policy and practice may directly or indirectly cut across community safety

bring forward proposals for mainstreaming community safety into the planning and delivery of all Government services and programmes

investigate possible financial mechanisms which would facilitate a shift in public expenditure towards preventive community safety, including local authority and police authority funding formulae

< Previous | Contents | Next >