Report of the Strategic Director (Neighbourhoods)

This report provides an update on the work of the Community Safety Partnership with particular focus on serious and organised crime, including gun crime and knife crime.

The Committee received a report of the Strategic Director (Neighbourhoods) which provided an update on the work of the Community Safety Partnership with particular focus on serious and organised crime, including gun crime and knife crime.

Officers referred to the main points and themes within the report which included:

• Tackling crime and antisocial behaviour;
• Keeping children and young people safe;
• Protecting people from serious harm;
• Reducing the crime impact caused by alcohol and drugs;
• Changing and preventing adult offending behaviour; and
• Next steps.

Damian Dallimore from the GMCA informed the Committee about his role, heading the Violence Reduction Programme for Greater Manchester, managing the Violence Reduction Unit, working as Partnership Lead for Challenger, the partnership approach to tackling serious and organised crime, and working closely with colleagues in Children’s Services on complex safeguarding.  He highlighted the focus on early intervention, prevention and working with families to address the root causes of violence, and on partnership working and taking a community-led approach.

Detective Superintendent Jamie Daniels delivered a presentation on the current picture and activities to address firearms discharges and serious organised crime.  The main points and themes within the presentation included:

• Summary of confirmed firearm discharges in 2020/21;
• Threat mitigation plan, including multi-agency work;
• Operation Haemus, which resulted in a reduction in serious criminality, particularly firearm discharges; and
• Other outcomes over the previous 12 months.

Some of the key points that arose from the Committee’s discussions were:

• Public perception of the police and the importance of residents seeing that action was being taken, noting that when people reported incidents such as break-ins, speeding or drug dealing in their area and had difficulty contacting the police on the 101 number or their report was not followed up, they felt it was not being taken seriously and were less likely to report further incidents;
• Issues within specific wards which had been reported to GMP but were still a problem;
• Request for more community police in local areas;
• Tackling antisocial behaviour, noting that this did not just relate to homelessness and street begging;
• How partner organisations worked together;
• To thank GMP officers for their work during the pandemic;
• Action to tackle modern slavery; and
• The forthcoming changes to probation services, supporting people leaving prison and the link between ex-offenders and homelessness.

The Community Safety Lead highlighted the importance of partnership working, particularly in relation to early intervention and prevention.  She outlined the local partnership arrangements which were in place in each area, comprising of organisations such as GMP, different Council departments, housing providers and voluntary and community organisations, working together to solve problems in that area.  She informed Members that the Community Safety Partnership worked across the whole city, bringing together the strategic leads from those organisations to ensure delivery of the strategy and that there were also strong links with the GMCA, working together and utilising good practice from across Greater Manchester. 

The Community Safety Lead informed the Committee that tackling antisocial behaviour was a key priority for the Partnership and outlined some of the work taking place to address this, including encouraging reporting and a Day of Action, advising that a range of partners including GMP, the Council’s Neighbourhood Teams and Antisocial Behaviour Team were working together to identify those responsible and action that could be taken in response to it.  In response to requests for a breakdown of youth provision across the city and information on organisations funded to undertake preventative work, she advised that she could provide information on youth provision funded through the Community Safety Partnership, although this did not include all youth provision in the city.  She advised that this provision was targeted at areas with high levels of antisocial behaviour and crime which impacted on children and young people.  She also advised that youth provision was only one element of this work and cited as other examples the Inclusion Strategy, which aimed to keep children and young people in school, and the Our Manchester Strategy, which she reported, addressed a lot of the underlying issues which led to crime.

Chief Superintendent Paul Savill informed the Committee about the expectations that the newly appointed Chief Constable of GMP was setting out for officers about responding effectively to crime, including the recording of crime, the investigation, safeguarding victims and the victim being satisfied at the end of the process.  He reported that the Chief Constable had made clear that this included crimes such as burglaries, vehicle crime and drug supply which affected how safe people felt in their local area.  He advised that the new Chief Constable would be looking to have some form of public consultation to enable local people and their representatives to contribute to their local and neighbourhood policing strategy.  He highlighted the need to reduce other demands on GMP, particularly responding to reports of vulnerable people, where these were not crime-related, through working with partners to ensure that vulnerable people could access the support they needed while freeing up policing time to undertake the crime recording and investigating activity that the public wanted from GMP.  He also referred to improvements in processes to increase efficiency, freeing up resources and officer time.  In addition, he highlighted the intake of new police officers and the impact they would have.

In response to a Member’s question about domestic abuse, the Community Safety Lead advised that her team produced a regular update for partners about the work taking place in this area and she offered to share this with Committee Members.  A Member commented on the wide impact of domestic abuse and advised that it should be referenced within all five priorities of the Community Safety Partnership.  The Community Safety Lead informed Members that a consultation was currently taking place about the new Domestic Violence and Abuse Strategy, that feedback from Members was being taken into account and that a report on this would be brought to a future meeting when she could discuss further how this linked into other strategies.  In response to a question about Prevent, she advised that she would check what information was available that could be shared with the Committee.  

The Strategic Head of Early Help informed the Committee that community champions had been recruited to raise people’s awareness of modern slavery and the signs to look out for, while work was also taking place with schools to make them aware of signs that children were at risk of exploitation.  She advised that the work to tackle modern slavery had particularly focussed on sexual exploitation and criminal exploitation and outlined work that had taken place to disrupt this activity.  She informed Members that the Complex Safeguarding Hub had a dedicated focus on the criminal exploitation of children and that two-thirds of requests for support related to children who were vulnerable or at risk of exploitation.  She informed the Committee about the national referral mechanism for children who were vulnerable to and had experienced criminal exploitation and about work with partner organisations such as Barnardo’s.

In response to a Member’s question, Chief Superintendent Paul Savill advised that the firearms discharges in north Manchester were not a result of the migration of activity from south and central Manchester to north Manchester.  He outlined some of the work that had been done in areas such as Moss Side, Hulme and Wythenshawe to reduce firearms discharges and advised that GMP and its partners wanted to replicate this approach in north Manchester.  In response to a Member’s question about the number of organised crime gangs in areas of north Manchester, Chief Superintendent Paul Savill advised that he could provide this information outside of the meeting to Members.  He also agreed for GMP to meet with north Manchester Councillors to discuss how the issues in their areas were being addressed.

The Community Safety Lead welcomed the opportunities presented by the forthcoming changes to probation services to improve services for people leaving prison, including a mentoring service.  She advised that education, employment and accommodation were key issues for people leaving prison. 

In response to a question from a Member, the Community Safety Lead reported that there had not been a decrease in the number of people accessing the Street Engagement Hub since the Everybody In scheme had ended. 

The Chair thanked the guests for their contribution and thanked GMP for the work they did to keep Manchester residents safe.

Decision

To note the report.

[Councillor Azra Ali declared a personal interest as an employee of Change Grow Live.]