The Wider Neighbourhood Management Approach
From Future of Local Services to the Public
Contents |
Summary
With every local community now in receipt of a dedicated neighbourhood policing team, the current Government appears committed to neighbourhood policing forming the bedrock of local policing in the 21st Century. With that comes a further commitment to embed and integrate local policing into the broader management of local neighbourhoods.
In line with the recommendations put forward by the reviews of Sir Ronnie Flannagan and Louise Casey, the Home Office’s Policing Green Paper (From the Neighbourhood to the National: policing our communities together) published in July 2008 sets out the Government’s vision for the future of local policing. Within this vision, local councils, schools, health agencies, and criminal justice agencies amongst others, are key partners in combating local problems to create safe and strong communities and are thus being asked to forge a closer partnership with neighbourhood policing.
This wider neighbourhood management approach would build on the coordination of current Neighbourhood Management schemes and the success of engagement in neighbourhood policing to include joint tasking, co-location and strategic management. In theory this would mean that the partnership would work together to identify and resolve issues so that a problem with drugs use for example, would be tackled jointly by the neighbourhood police, heath and rehabilitation agencies and education services.
Impacts
Joint Tasking:
- agencies working together towards shared publicly-negotiated local community safety priorities;
- shared information, communication and feedback processes; and
- joined up community engagement, with local authority involvement at neighbourhood policing public meetings and vice versa.
Co-location
- Creating teams working collectively from the same office - consisting of police, local authority and other relevant organisations.
Strategic Neighbourhood Management
- Creating clearly defined neighbourhoods
- Where there is joint action, nominated officers in all agencies are needed to act as contact points.
- The potential need for each local authority to have a neighbourhood manager or coordinator to lead policy and integration.
Relevance
- Management Officials to coordinate the integration of this partnership
- Front Line Staff: new roles will be created and coordination across a variety of issues and agencies would need to be enhanced.
- Citizens and Residents, who will have a more coordinated channel through which to engage.
Innovations
The Green Paper cites the example of Trinity Ward in Burnley, Lancashire, where wider neighbourhood management is effectively already in place. The neighbourhood policing team already work closely with the neighbourhood manager and work with 25 partner agencies to tackle community identified problems. Residents were regularly kept informed of work from the partnership which included joint patrols, community clean-ups, school visits, youth diversion and use of enforcement activitites.
References
Home Office Green Paper From the Neighbourhood to the National: policing our communities together
http://police.homeoffice.gov.uk/police-reform/policegp/
Louise Casey Engaging Communities in Fighting Crime Review
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/crime.aspx
Sir Ronnie Flannagan Review of Policing
http://police.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/police-reform/Review_of_policing_final_report/flanagan-final-report
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