Policies and Guidance
In addition to the legislation set out in the Crime and Disorder Act and other legislation, there are a number of policies and guidance that can also help you in your work. This section of the guide looks at the National Community Safety Plan and lists other important guidance you may use in your job.
National Community Safety Plan (NCSP)
The 2004 White Paper ‘Building Communities, Beating Crime: A better police service for the 21st century” contained a commitment to produce a community safety strategy in 2005. The NCSP 20062009 was published on 16 November 2005. It incorporates the National Policing Plan 2006-9 which sets out the Home Secretary’s priorities for the police service.
The NCSP identifies that community safety cannot be successfully delivered by the police alone, and that effective, broadly-based partnerships are vital. It describes a shared endeavour to deliver safer communities.
The plan sets out key priorities for community safety for 2006-9 under five themes:
- Making communities stronger and more effective.
- Further reducing crime and anti-social behaviour.
- Creating safer environments.
- Protecting the public and building confidence.
- Improving people’s lives so they are less likely to commit offences, or re-offend.
The NCSP’s key messages are:
- Effective partnership working at national and local level is the only way to achieve community safety goals. Community safety cannot be delivered by the police and other agencies working in isolation.
- As well as expressing the Government’s key priorities for community safety, the NCSP signals the beginning of a much closer collaboration between central and local government and local partners. In the future, local views and opinions will be key to the setting of priorities and the development of new policies and initiatives. This is a new way of working on community safety.
- The Plan is intended to ensure that central government considers community safety in the exercise of all its functions – a requirement similar to that placed on local partners by Section 17 of the Crime & Disorder Act 1998.
Communities are at the heart of the Plan. Strong and active voluntary and community groups make a vital contribution to community safety. The Plan underlines the need for active citizens to help identify community safety priorities in their neighbourhoods and to work with key local agencies to make sure they are tackled through close engagement with Local Strategic Partnerships and Crime & Disorder Reduction Partnerships.
The Plan is primarily about cultural change in the way that central government operates around a shared community safety agenda. It places no new burdens or responsibilities upon either central or local partner, and at the local level, it aims to provide clear central priorities in order to assist local planning of community safety improvements.
Further details of the NCSP can be found at: www.crimereduction.gov.uk/communitysafety01.htm
Updated NCSP November 2006
The Plan was updated in November 2006, at which point a sixth priority was added:
Preventing extremism and countering terrorism
Under this priority, the aim is to continue to deliver the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy (known as CONTEST). There are four main areas of focus. For communities, these are to:
prevent the radicalisation of individuals by challenging extremist ideologies and tackling local disadvantage and discrimination;
pursue terrorists and their sponsors by encouraging all to contribute to the information gathering that is necessary to disrupt terrorist activity;
protect the public by reducing vulnerability to a terrorist attack through safeguarding the national infrastructure and managing risk in crowded places; and
prepare for the consequences of a terrorist attack by improving our resilience and planning for civil contingencies.
Details of the NCSP Update can be found at: www.crimereduction.gov.uk/communitysafety01d.pdf
Other Policies and Guidance
In addition to the NCSP, there are a range of other policies and guidance that can help you with specific areas of community safety work. The table below lists key policies and where you can find them. All these policies are currently in use, but there are also a lot of changes due to arrive on the scene in the next few months. Because of this, you will need to keep track of policy changes in your area of work. NCSN provide regular policy updates on their website: www.community-safety.net
Question
How does your organisation keep track of changes in policy? It may be that you have a policy officer who does this or it may be down to you as an individual. Find out how policy is monitored in your organisation and make a note of who you need to speak to.
