Agenda item

18.1     The Head of Safer Communities introduced the report and gave a short presentation on the Safe Communities Annual Review 2022-2023 and the Serious Violence Duty, including local responsibilities. The Head of Safe Communities noted that East Sussex remained a relatively safe place to live but there were ongoing challenges, especially for some groups and areas.

18.2     The Committee asked questions and made comments on the following areas:

·         Anti-social behaviour – The Committee asked about work to address anti-social behaviour, including noise from motor vehicles, and the role of social housing providers to support this work. In response the Head of Safer Communities informed the Committee that housing and anti-social behaviour was managed at a District and Borough level and that as an upper tier authority, East Sussex County Council were limited in their scope, but street communities had been included into the business plan objectives for the Safer Communities Partnership in response to the rise in this. The local authority was also represented on the strategic housing partnership. The Committee noted the need for a multi-agency and multi-tier response to this issue. In response to the concern about noise, the Head of Safer Communities clarified that this would fall under the remit of the Safer Roads Partnership but would be able to flag this issue with them. The Committee also asked about the role of educating young people on the consequences of anti-social behaviour and heard from the Director of Children’s Services that schools were working well to educate children on citizenship and values.

·         Community safety action groups – The Committee asked about the possibility of reinstating Community Safety Action Groups. The Head of Safer Communities responded to say that the Department, as part of the response to the Serious Violence Duty and with funding from Safter Streets, were seconding a police analyst to carry out an in depth profile of lower super output areas in the District and Boroughs, including community engagement, which would be presented to the local community safety partnerships to take forward more targeted pieces of work.

·         Knife crime – The Committee noted the work of the intervention project ‘Habitual Knife Carriers Programme’ outlined in the report and the significant impact of young people involved having improved outcomes. The Committee asked if there were other activities that the Council could invest in to produce similar outcomes for young people. The Director of Children’s Services told the Board that the project evaluation had been reviewed at the recent Youth Justice Chief Officers Group and they were looking at how to share the successful outcomes with other parts of Children’s Services. The Director acknowledged the funding from the Safer Communities Partnership to continue the project and stated this was an important piece of work that supported the approach of the connected practice model in social care and the work of Early Help.

·         Gender hate crime – The Committee asked how the Partnership was responding to the increase in gender hate crime. The Head of Safer Communities responded to say that numbers in this area were still low so there were no current discussions on this at the Partnership Board. It was noted in the report due to the issues of identify politics and polarisation of views so the Partnership were keeping a monitoring brief on this. The Police were also responding proactively to these incidents.

18.3     The Committee thanked officers for their work and RESOLVED to note the report.

The meeting concluded at: 12.47pm