Issue - meetings

Report of the Director of Communities attached.

The Cabinet Member for Health and Wellbeing (Councillor Mick Titherington), Director of Communities, Community Safety and Safeguarding Manager, and Chief Inspector of Lancashire Constabulary presented an update on the work of the Community Safety Partnership and responded to members’ comments and queries.

The Community Safety Partnership (CSP) is a statutory body made up of representatives from local authorities, the police, fire and rescue authorities and health and probation services. It was highlighted that overall crime figures had decreased and the Cabinet Member emphasised that South Ribble remained a safe place to live.

Members were particularly interested in the learning for the CSP following the COVID-19 pandemic and were advised that the reliance on the Partnership and the level of collaboration between partners had been noted especially during the pandemic.

The Chief Inspector also commented that the unpredictability of demand for assistance and the need to be flexible with this fluidity had been recognised.

In response to a query regarding how the Partnership ensures good governance, it was confirmed that robust governance measures are in place and that these are well-documented and publicly available.

The report highlighted that a recent review of the governance and partnership arrangements of the Lancashire Community Safety Partnership had concluded that either a thematic or geographic model would work well in practice.

However, South Ribble and Chorley CSPs had indicated that a thematic model was their preferred approach which was queried by members given the usual practice of a geographic neighbourhood model typically adopted by South Ribble.

Reassurances were provided in response that this would only apply to the wider Lancashire Community Safety Partnership and would have no impact on the CSP in South Ribble. It was advised that a thematic model was preferred to fully utilise the specialisms of officers within the Partnership.

A query was raised regarding how the success of the Integrated Offender Management scheme is evaluated. In response, members were informed that a decline in reoffending rates was viewed as the main indicator for success of this scheme and members welcomed the Chief Inspector’s offer to provide figures on this after the meeting.

The success of Community Protection Warnings were also acknowledged, with only 10 of 51 being escalated to Community Protection Notices and 1 Fixed Penalty Notice.

Members were interested to hear the extent to which Domestic Homicide Reviews are conducted independently from the Council and how lessons are learned from such Reviews.

In response, the Director of Communities advised that Reviews are chaired independently. Reviews are then verified by the Home Office with the possibility of further assessment before publication.

Further clarification on the work of the South Ribble Integrated Team (SRIT) was also requested and the committee was informed that each local area will have their own Integrated Team, although it was acknowledged that some Teams are more advanced.

Integrated Teams like SRIT provide early assistance and intervention in communities before issues reach statutory services, such as the NHS. It was noted that the COVID-19 pandemic  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7