Agenda and minutes

Members to note any apologies.

Apologies for absence from the meeting were received from Councillor Christopher Malpas and Sharon Henley Co-optee.

Members to approve the minutes of the meeting held on 4^th February 2013.

The minutes of the meeting held on 4^th February 2013 were approved and signed by the Chair.

There were none.                                     .

There were none.

The Scrutiny Panel to consider the Chair's draft report and consider including any further conclusions or recommendations, as appropriate.

The Panel considered the Chair’s draft report.

The Scrutiny Officer confirmed that all the witness had been contacted and had confirmed the accuracy of the information given in the report. She also explained the report submission and monitoring process.

The Panel considered the conclusions and key findings of the report. The main points of their discussion were as follows:-

·         Councillors needed to be given regular updates on the demographics on their wards and on the Community Safety Partnership work undertaken in their area. Additional recommendations were included to reflect this.

·         Encouraging the public to use open spaces would help to reduce crime and reduce the “broken window” effect.

·         Enhancement projects can be useful but proper consideration needed to be given to what happened when these projects came to an end and on-going maintenance was required.

·         Information collected in Accident and Emergency departments needed to be reviewed as to how it was used. Information needed to be passed to the relevant partners in a timely manner. The proposed recommendation was strengthened to reflect this.

·         The Panel discussed the town centre and the night time economy. They were advised that the street pastors were seeking a central location to act as a base. The Police were also introducing mobile custody suites to provide facilities to quickly remove people who had been detained because of drunken behaviour.

·         Neighbourhood Wardens played a vital role and action needed to be taken to ensure that they were properly trained with specific focus on on-going crime prevention and community safety training.

·         Members of the volunteer sector should be encouraged to become involved with the Community Safety Partnership.

·         An additional recommendation was included to maximise the work done by the Community Payback scheme. Work should be targeted to agreed priorities.

·         Links between Enterprise Management Services (EMS) and Northampton Borough Council be strengthened to ensure faster information sharing and faster responses to dealing with service issues.

The Chair commented that she felt that it had been a really in depth review and that she was very pleased with results. She thanked all of the Members, Co-optees, Officers and witnesses for their input into the report.

AGREED

1. The final Review report: Serious Acquisitive Crime and Violent Crime/Community Safety be confirmed, subject to the additions as shown in the report attached to these minutes.

2. The Chair of the Panel will present the report to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 25 April 2013.