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Executive Summary
Our Ambition
The Partnership ambition is to optimise interventions and initiatives across the county making East Sussex a safer place to live, work and visit by protecting vulnerable people, identifying those at risk of harm, and keeping communities safe.
We are committed to working collaboratively across the statutory and voluntary sectors to reduce and prevent crime and anti-social behaviour, support the victims of crime, protect our most vulnerable residents, and create more inclusive and resilient neighbourhoods and communities. We will achieve this through raising awareness, through coproduction and collaboration, and through driving wider policy and systems change.
Our objectives take account of legislative imperatives, local and national best practice, and what works well across East Sussex’s services and initiatives. They are evidence and data-led and informed by a re-imagined strategic approach which recognises the impact of service design on outcomes for people and places that have experienced multiple disadvantage.
Our Strategic Priorities
§ In protecting vulnerable people, workstreams range from improving online safety to disrupting modern slavery and protecting people from domestic and sexual violence and abuse.
§ In identifying those at risk of harm, workstreams range from preventing people from being drawn into violent extremism to reducing the harms associated with drug and alcohol misuse.
§ In keeping communities safe, workstreams range from improving road safety to reducing public place anti-social behaviour (ASB) and serious violence.
Key Strategic Messages
§ East Sussex is a relatively safe place to live, work, and visit, although there are some significant collective challenges – most significantly around the acute shortage of affordable, appropriate housing across the county, which exacerbates vulnerability and hinders rehabilitation.
§ The Safer Communities Partnership collectively delivers a range of effective services, interventions and community safety initiatives, without which, the impact of the issues and challenging some of our residents and communities would be far more acute.
· Some communities (places and people) are disproportionately affected by certain types of crime and ASB, and experience multiple types of disadvantage and/or discrimination.
§ The Partnership must comply with statutory guidance, legislation and policy with new duties and statutory requirements around Prevent and Serious Violence, domestic abuse, the reduction in the supply and demand for drugs, and the duty to deliver a high-quality substance misuse treatment and recovery system.
§ There is compelling evidence to support the co-production of solutions across organisations, and in partnership with those who are most affected by these issues. Resilient communities are safer communities.
§ Collaborative and evidence-based working is underpinned by sound data quality, visibility and sharing.
§ The Partnership is committed to adjusting its systems to improve outcomes for those who have experienced multiple disadvantage.
Number of crimes committed per 100,000 people in 2022
1 National Drivers influencing Safer Communities Work
Several national policy drivers and statutory duties inform the work of the East Sussex Safer Communities Partnership:
· The Beating Crime Plan - GOV.UK sets out the Government’s plan to deliver the ‘change that Britain needs’, with less crime, fewer victims, and a safer country.
· The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 places a new duty on schools, police, councils, and health authorities to prevent serious violence.
· The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 reforming how the justice system and partner agencies work with victims of domestic abuse, and introducing a duty on local authorities to provide support in safe accommodation for victims of abuse.
· The Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004 places a duty on Community Safety Partnerships to conduct Domestic Homicide Reviews.
· New recommendations arising from the Independent Review of the Modern Slavery Act - GOV.UK.
· The Counter-terrorism strategy CONTEST 2018 - GOV.UK aims to reduce the risk to the UK and its citizens and interests overseas from terrorism, so that people can go about their lives freely and with confidence.
· The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 and the recommendations in the Independent Review of Prevent’s report and government response - GOV.UK.
· The national Combatting Drugs Strategy From harm to hope: A 10-year drugs plan to cut crime and save lives.
· The Draft Online Safety Bill - GOV.UK which establishes a new regulatory framework to tackle harmful content online.
· The pending Illegal Migration Act 2023.
· The pending Victims and Prisoners Bill - GOV.UK and the joint statutory duty on Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs), Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and local authorities to work together when commissioning support services for victims of domestic abuse, sexual abuse and other serious violence – so that services can be strategically coordinated and targeted where victims need them.
2 Local Strategic Alignment
This Business Plan aims to have operational application and to inform the actions of agencies working across the community safety landscape in East Sussex. It reflects and complements the individual priorities of the five District and Borough Community Safety Partnerships, National Probation Service, Fire and Rescue Service, Sussex Police and the Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner’s Office, alongside those of our local Adults and Children’s Safeguarding Boards and the Youth Justice Plan.
3 Our Approach
The Partnership aims to implement a Public Health approach to improving the safety of our communities. We believe that the issues we are trying to address are not inevitable, that there are strong correlations between deprivation, vulnerability and crime, that we must do no harm, and that we must target our resources and energy in line with the evidence of ‘what works’.
Our approach is underpinned by a commitment to responding to people across the entirety of their experience, and by the promotion of diversity and equity of access to service provision. Of equal importance is the proportionate targeting of resource at a place-based level, recognising that there are chronic, long-term hotspots for crime and ASB which tend to be in the most deprived areas.
There are various interdependencies between the Partnership’s workstreams, with actions in one area affecting the outcomes in another. Our approach to tackling serious violence will therefore take account of the need to reduce drug and alcohol-related harm; our work on reducing re-offending will consider the impact of homelessness and worklessness on recidivism; and our actions to tackle public place anti-social behaviour will read across to our commitment to eliminating harassment and Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG). Running through all our workstreams is a focus on online safety and an attention to individuals who have experienced multiple disadvantage (those with ‘compound’ needs) through an intersectional lens.
The Partnership includes representation from specialist Children’s Services in recognition that communities are made up of both adults and children, and an understanding that upstream interventions that support behaviour change reduce the necessity for future crisis-driven responses. An integrated approach relies on partners taking an active role at a systems level tackling issues at scale through aligning priorities, commissioning, and external income generation; and sharing resources, data insights, intelligence, and learning. The implementation of change, however, happens at a local level - where people live, work and access services. It is at a place-based level that the contribution of our VCSE partners in enabling a safer East Sussex and as bridges to local communities is most important.
The Partnership will work together to create strong networks of support, building connections, shared values, and trust across and between communities, and empowering people in communities have a sense of control, to support each other and to take collective action. This approach draws on community assets, encouraging participation, influence, and ownership, while continuing to safeguard more vulnerable individuals and finding ways to enable their voices to be heard.
Community safety is an outcome rather than a collection of services, and the East Sussex Safer Communities Partnership is more than just the sum of its parts. Taking a data and evidence-informed approach to strategic and business planning, the Partnership will continue to evaluate its collective impact, developing a shared understanding of ‘what works’ and how best to achieve sustainability.
4 Our Strategic Objectives
• Build resilience in communities, and co-design services to improve life-outcomes.
• Identify and shape services to anticipate and respond to people and places that experience multiple disadvantage.
• Increase awareness of violence against women and girls, the support available, and the importance of reporting to police.
• Ensure the provision of safe accommodation options for victims of domestic abuse and their children.
• Collaborate to tackle Serious Violence, working to address the causes of causes of violence in our communities.
• Disrupt Modern Slavery & Human Trafficking activity and ensure our supply chains are free from modern slavery.
• Embed better identification and referral of adult victims of violence, exploitation and abuse.
• Raise public awareness around fraud and scams.
• Comply with the legislative changes following the Independent Review of PREVENT.
• Support community cohesion initiatives around asylum seekers and migrant accommodation.
• Improve access to high quality, accessible drug and alcohol treatment services, increasing numbers in treatment by 20%.
• Reduce drug-related deaths.
5 Protecting Vulnerable People: Snapshot
6 Identifying those at Risk of Harm: Snapshot
7 Keeping Communities Safe: Snapshot
8 Complementary Community Safety Initiatives: Snapshot
