Agenda and minutes

Councillor Ghani, the Cabinet Member for Enforcement & Community Safety and Chair opened the March 2023 Community Safety Partnership (CSP) Board and apologies were noted.

Members of the Board are asked to declare any personal or prejudicial interest they may have in any matter which is to be considered at this meeting.

No declarations of interest to note.

ACTION: Chris Lyons to amend the Community Safety Partnership Terms of Reference to reflect the new Community Safety & Substance Misuse Board.

• Chris Lyons - will be circulated next week to all CSP members and will be open to comments. 

ACTION: Amolak Tatter to bring Alcohol and Drugs Needs Assessment to the next Community Safety & Substance Misuse Board

• Cllr Ghani, This is item 4 of the agenda.

ACTION: Amolak Tatter to bring an update on the Cultural Competencies work to the next Community Safety & Substance Misuse Board.

• Clare Brutton –

Ø  The cultural competency work is based on one of the identified markers in the substance misuse 5-year strategy, which look at the wider community and how we engage with our demographic.

Ø  We need to think much more cohesively about how we engage different community groups, different faith groups, seldom heard groups and how we can make much more of our impact in the drugs and alcohol and engaging  these cohorts into a treatment plans.

ACTION: Angela D’Urso to bring a Domestic Homicide Review Update to the next Community Safety & Substance Misuse Board

• Cllr Ghani – This item will be presented by Chris Lyons

ACTION: Chris Lyons to contact MOPAC about providing funding for the Domestic Homicide Review and to enquire if any unused funding from previous years has accumulated. 

• Chris Lyons – This was initially Stuart Bell’s suggestion. He thought there was some money we might be able to tap into at MOPAC I have raised it with Isabelle Kennedy. There’s not been an answer back yet, but I will keep pushing on that. Although, we have secured enough funding to conduct a basic domestic homicide review.

ACTION: Sub-group chairs that could not attend December’s 2022 CSP are required to give feedback on the current CSP Plan 2023-2026 priorities (Complete)

ACTION: Stuart Bell to share data acquired through the Zen City app with the CSP – carry over to June 2023 CSP

• Cllr Ghani – The Zen City is a community engagement app and Stuart Bell mentioned  that the police had been using this last at the last CSP. We haven't received the data and Stuart has sent his apologies for so Stuart is actually off today. This action will be taken to the CSP in June 2023

• In the Dame Carol Black report it is outlined that those children and young people who have had adverse childhood experiences are more likely to develop drugs and alcohol problems that will accompany them into adulthood, and that will obviously impact on things like education, around social inclusion, and also impacts on the family and the wider.
• LBBD don't have that many hospital admissions for Barking and Dagenham and we are below the national average, which is 85% and we're at 68%.
• We are also doing pieces of work with children, social care around early identification of children with substance misuse.
• We know that for most children that substance misuse is the overwhelming substance of choice of cannabis and followed closely by alcohol, and we're seeing a rise in children taking ketamine as well.
• Nicotine is relatively low, but we know that children are vaping as not in a way of giving up cigarettes, but is a lifestyle choice and more work needs to be done around education and also our substance misuse services to make sure that we come back down to national average because at the moment we're fluctuating in the higher echelons of that numbers
• Planned exits again, we have much more, more children that are leaving our services in a planned and sustained ways

Cllr Worby praised the work being done to tackle alcohol and substance misuse. As laughing gas has recently become a prescribed substance it is important to reflect the issues and new policy around laughing gas within the needs assessment as the use within the borough is quite high.Cllr Worby also notes that the police have a difficult job in finding silver canisters within the tri-borough which is extremely difficult.

Claire Brutton responded that laughing gas substance misuse will be implemented within the needs assessment with the help of SubWise.

Nathan Singleton noted that in section 1.3 on the executive summary where it talks about barking and Dagenham’s young people's substance misuse statistics being better than the national average, there seems to be a lack of confidence in where our numbers are sat. There doesn’t seem to be a grip on what's going on or where there are positive results. Within the  report there were comments around how effective Subwise are and how well respected and flexible they are. However, if LBBD are not completely sure about our data, then we're guessing it might be that staff aren't trained properly, or it might be something complete different. Nathan Singleton questioned if he and the board could get some reassurance in relation to this.

Clare Brutton assured that what is being reflected within the five year strategy is thinking about what our data is telling us, what it showing, but also comparing it to the national data. So if we are out of kilter in any aspect such as the number of people that go into Queens Hospital, for example, alcohol related issues, we know that we are significantly below the average for  ...  view the full minutes text for item 15.

• 90% of victim support referrals come through police through the police and 10% from MARAC
• When refferals comes into IDVAS and then we have a look at the high risk we split the service between the high risk service and the medium risk.
• As a trend for domestic violence victims is we're seeing a lot of young people (16-24 year olds) coming into our services and they do present with either mental health issues or drug and alcohol.
• The IDVAS service is funded by MOPAC and currently is in contract for another 2 years – this is hopefully to be extended.
• There is currently a project underway that reaches out to women who are difficult to engage with across the tri-borough and this is largely due to victims not reporting their abuse.
• It is also difficult to engage with young people and getting them into the IDVAS services.

David Lingard noted that he did reach out to Victim Support about six months ago to enquire around how the new Antisocial behaviour team could help support the boroughs victims. David Lingard said he would reach out again.

Alexandra responded that there is also a hate crime unit within victim support, a homicide unit, a young people unit and an IDVAS service. So there’s different types of units that the council can link up with and it would be useful to have a conversation around how to collate information and increase partnership working.

Gary Jones noted that the new Community Safety Team is small in size but there is opportunity to support with outreach, particularly with the new brand in that we've got the gazebos actually getting out within the communities. The council used to do some work specifically on reporting crimes to the police and reporting incidents into the council and we are committed to obviously support these services, our teams across. The Enforcement and regulatory services do come across people that are suffering domestic violence and come across specific incidents and we need to be working more collaboratively in terms of delivering. Angela D’Urso delivered at one of the Enforcement service meetings and presented to 80 members of staff and we want to continue with that narrative and embed this within our services.

Angela D’Urso commented that on a tri-borough, our colleagues in Redbridge and Havering been having conversations with I think an victim support colleague of yours about mapping out those referral pathways and bringing some consistency across that and that as you refer to kind of those pathways in and out and where things are I actually would be great and we can continue those conversations outside of the meeting. Angela D’Urso invites Alexandra Joseph to the

Violence Against Women and Girls strategic group as Victim Support have been invited but the invite has not been reaching the right person. It would be useful if Victim Support would attend the VAWG Strategic group for information sharing and partnership working.

Cllr Ghani questioned how the Victim Support service works  ...  view the full minutes text for item 16.

• A special Serious Violence Duty workshop was held with CSP board members back on the 31st of January to discuss the implementation of the new Serious Violence Duty. This is now part of law and the CSP have a statutory obligation to work together to minimise violence. This duty builds on best practise that we've already been doing in the borough.

• There is already an existing VRU Violence and Vulnerability Action plan which we update quarterly.
• There will be a continuation to update and maintain our current plans.
• The Home Office are working on like a new action plan template for serious violence and once this arrives our current plan will be formatted to match this.
• During the Serious Violence Duty Workshop it was established a working group would be created for this first year just to lead the implementation of the duty.
• Steve Calder kindly offered to Co-chair the first meeting with Fiona Taylor, who's our chief executive. There is also an additional plan to include the new partnership  Superintendent in the chairing of those meetings moving forward.
• There is a need to produce a serious violence needs assessment and we now have agreed a timeline with that.
• The Councils analyst Daniel James is going to look to commence that work in June this year and this will run through till about September.
• Daniel James will be producing the Serious Violence Needs assessment alongside 2022/23 crime and disorder strategic assessment which will take place between the end of September and the start of December.
• The Serious Violence Needs Assessment will be presented at Decembers CSP board for sign off which will mean that the CSP have filled their requirement to implement the duty by the 31st of January next year.
• The funding for the Serious Violence Duty is £79,000 over 3 years.
• For the year 2022/23 there were £10,000 available which will be used in conjunction with Redbridge’s funding to commission detatched outreach work on Ilford lane whereby young people from Barking and Dagenham and Redbridge are being exploited. This project will be mobilised in the next couple of months. 

Cllr Ghani praises the joint commissioning of detatched outreach work as there are issues particularly around serious violence on Ilford Lane.

Steve Calder wanted to note for the minutes his condolences to Zara Aleena, who was tragically murdered by Mr Mc Sweeny.

• 6 Probation Delivery Units (PDU) were inspected over the summer of 2022
• On the 18th October HMIP published the first three inspection reports. All were rated as inadequate.
• Barking, Dagenham received an overall rating of ‘requires improvement.
• The unification of the former Community Rehabilitation Services (CRCs) and the National Probation Service (NPS) took place at the end of June 2021.  This created the London region of the Probation Service, which has statutory responsibility for over 35,000 offenders in the community and custody in the capital.
• The overall results were poor, but not unexpected due to staffing challenges post-unification
• HMIP Action Plan - Recruitment and Retention: London now has support from a national HMPPS recruitment team which has financed advertising probation roles on social media and job fairs
• A Quality Improvement Programme has been developedto cover the operational HMIP recommendations. This includes a practitioner and manager upskilling package and greater oversight operational procedures and administrative data quality
• Zara Alena was murdered by Jordan McSweeney an Independent review was published on Tuesday 24^th June.
• The report found failings in the risk assessment of McSweeney and that the Probation Service missed an opportunity to recall him sooner and if had done so would have maximised the possibility that he would have been returned to prison sooner
• Key recommendations from the review are to:

- Develop processes to ensure that all recall decisions are signed off and submitted bySenior Probation Officers within the 24-hour target period – with compliance againstthis target monitored in every Probation Delivery Unit on at least a monthly

- Develop a London wide initiative on neurodiversity and invest in trauma informedtraining for staff.

Cllr Ghani stated the Mr McSweeny case was due to a failure carrying out a service risk assessment and questioned what actions are being taken to address this.

Steven Calder responded that the Inspection, the inspector's view that the risk assessment we was assessed as medium risk of harm and protect should have been, should have been assessed as a high. The context was that he was there was a late allocation and confusion when he was allocated to a new officer and there was not the opportunity to conduct a full review. What the findings does show, and we do fully accept, is there was information that that practitioner did not receive in in a timely fashion that may have impacted the risk assessment, changed to higher at an earlier date. Which means that he may have been released as a as a high risk of arm, and that may have meant some different actions were taken. There is learning and that we have found across the whole region in probation that there are some failings or so there's some learning around the quality of that risk assessment and that ISIS assessment, hence the entire regional quality uplift plan. For all staff new  ...  view the full minutes text for item 19.

• Within Barking and Dagenham between 20 and 25 residents of Barking and Dagenham receiving unpaid work requirement as a component of a community or suspended sentence order every single month
• Individuals can be sentenced to anywhere between 40 and 300 hours of unpaid work, which they are expected to do at least once a week.
• The current average length of an unpaid work requirement is 120 hours.
• The requirement to meet in groups in very often travelling vehicles together did not play out well for us in the pandemic or for the 18 months post pandemic and capacity was significantly reduced.
• The caseload has doubled in size and there is a substantial backlog of cases with outstanding unpaid work.
• There is 30,000 hours of unpaid work waiting to dispense, so Community Payback are open, willing and keen to work with partners to increase and diversify our offer.
• It has been a challenge to recruit for project supervisors over the last 18 months.
• There are a dozen group sessions running each week in the in the borough, which can be situated in parks, schools, care homes and other community spaces around the barriers such as Dagenham and Redbridge Football Club.

• A number of activities are undertaken, everything from painting and decorating, horticulture activities, litter picking, assisting the local authority with fly tips.
• The only work we're not supposed to do work that someone else is being paid to do – this is becoming an increasingly grey area.
• Community Payback works as a deterrent to commit anti-social behaviour as they work in public spaces.

Steven Calder praised the work of Community Payback. Steven Calder noted that King Charles’ coronation is fast approaching and that it could be an effective use for Community Payback to do a pre and post-clean up of areas where coronation events will be held.

Cllr Ghani noted that the CSP co-ordinate monthly meetings to help identify payback jobs and since this has happened the work has increased from 100 hours per week to 1800 hours per week. Cllr Ghani questioned how Community Payback are going to respond to the prime minister’s announcement of the Anti-Social Behaviour Plan.

Matthew Chaplin assured that Community Payback will work closely with partners. In the east of London Community Payback is ahead of the newly proposed Anti-Social Behaviour Plan as there are already mobile units operating Monday – Saturday and there is existing confidence of Barking and Dagenham being able to fulfil the duties of the plan.

Chris Lyons thanked Matthew Chaplin for all the work he’s done in Community Payback and has been instrumental in the variety of jobs being completed such as painting in sheltered housing, work in sports clubs and charity shops and parks.

• The draft of the CSP plan 2023-26 Plan has been circulated through internal governance groups and engagement such as: the CSP Board workshop in December 2022, resident consultation through One Borough Voice and Scrutiny.
• The CSP Plan will go to Cabinet for approval on the 18^th April 2023.

• Community Safety Partnership Board Consultation Workshop December 2022 – High level findings:

-Women’s safety and serious violence are emerging priorities which need to feature more prominently in the next Community Safety plan.

- There is a need to increase visibility of the Police, council, and partners working within our community.

- Cost of living: concerns about the impact on local crime, in particular low level offending and the exploitation of young people.

- Tackling organised crime: Street begging is an issue within the borough and there is an organised crime element which sits behind it such as deploying people to certain areas and also filters down to lower-level crime.

- The local authority and partners should increase their support of grassroots organisations to carry out work that tackles crime and exploitation.

- Amendments should be made to the CSP subgroups to ensure they remain fit for purpose and sharing of good practice from the Barking Town Centre Meeting, Ending Gang and Youth Violence Panel.

- Priority 2 of the CSP plan - ‘Tackling Crimes that affect people the most' is vague and should to be re-named into ‘tackling safety in the neighbourhoods/community’ picking up issues such as anti-social behaviour.

• Barking & Dagenham Community Safety Partnership Plan Online Consultation – February 2023:

- The resident consultation website received 231 visits to the consultation with 37 engagements.

- Residents were in support of the community safety priorities and actions. The highest level of support was received for the following priorities:

- Dedicated approach to reduce knife crime and organised offending across the borough

- Focus on improving visibility of police, council, and partners in the local community

- Having a connected community that respect each other and celebrates different backgrounds

- Educate and communicate the issues around domestic abuse and;

- Challenge abusive behaviours

- Issues that are affecting residents the most included fly tipping, anti-social behaviour and drug use.

• Barking & Dagenham Overview & Scrutiny Committee Comments - February 2023

- The Overview & Scrutiny Committee highlighted the importance of communication between all stakeholders and praised the acknowledgement of this in the Plan.

- The committee noted the need to listen to residents’ voices through the virtual resident engagement event and encouraged the Committee to promote this event in their communities.

- Concerns were noted about the perceived increase in violence towards women and girls.

- The community is conscious about the abstractions of Police officers out of the borough to Police large scale events and the impact this has on local safety.

- The visibility of Police is felt to have reduced and needs to be improved.

- The rise in online crime and the online safety of young people online is an area which  ...  view the full minutes text for item 21.

Safe Havens -

• There are 30 trained and registered Safe Haven’s across the borough. This is due to increase with Studio3Arts providing a second round of training for interested venues.
• A dedicated website to provide a link for businesses to sign-up, online training package and map showing locations of Safe Havens has been developed: https://www.lbbd.gov.uk/safe-havens
• A photo op with trained Safe Havens took place on the 6^th March 2023 and this has been used as a part of the comms campaign launching the Safe Haven scheme.

Personal Safety Alarm –

• To date 142 personal safety alarms have been collected as of the end of February 2023 by council staff to combat fears of unsafety around London Road car park.

Community Voluntary Sector –

• Applications for the CVS grant fund closed on the 20^th February 2023, whereby one pot of £20,000 was awarded to Studio3Arts for the delivery of educational and trauma-informed safety sessions.
• These sessions will inform and empower residents on how to stay safe by simplifying statutory organisation information into bite-sized knowledge that is accessible to all residents.

Womens Safety Data –

• Every quarter, the Womens Safety Group is delivered a summary of data of Violence Against Women and Girls crimes.
• 326 domestic abuse offences & 62 sexual offences in January 2023 in Barking and Dagenham.
•  According to Home Office figures (12 months to September) there has been an increase in controlling & coercive behaviour, stalking and modern slavery and a decrease in harassment and malicious communications.

Communication Safety Enforcement –

• Community Safety currently have static security presence outside Barking station and this will be replaced by patrols/ pulse patrols in coordination with police when further Community Safety officers are recruited.
• There were 10 joint patrols in November 2022, 6 in Barking Town Centre and 4 in Dagenham Heathway
• So far identified two additional locations for public space CCTV and continue to assess Barking town centre (including recommendations from EVA) for re purposing/ extra public space surveillance.
• CCTV is receiving further investment and part of this will be focused on Barking town centre including new wireless CCTV. 

Comms –

• Comms completed a first round of women's safety comms campaign to include advice and top tips for staying safe (20.01.2023), as well as directing comms towards perpetrators too. A second round of comms is due to go out.
• Womens Safety Online Meeting with residents took place on 21st February 6-7pm – with over 40 residents having attended as well as staff
• The Safe Haven Scheme was officially launched at the Womens Safety Online Meeting as well as the council and police showcasing the work they are producing to tackle violence against women and girls.
• General comms through social media will continue as normal.

David Lingard expanded that there is a new Community safety enforcement team of 10 officers at covering shifts so at anyone time there could be 2 in terms of joint patrolling. The SNT team, the neighbourhood teams are doing an absolutely excellent job of embracing partnership working.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 22.

Strategic oversight, governance –

• The VAWG Strategic Group had been re-established and underneath this sits the MARAC Steering Group and MARAC itself
• There is a Woman’s Safety Group currently in operation that sits under the Community Safety Partnership.
• Tri-borough VAWG Strategic Group and Tri brought police and local authority lead meeting
• A Woman’ Safety Forum is in the process of being established following the Woman’s safety Q&A

Learning and Development Offer:

• Toolkits in relation to domestic abuse is available to all staff and professionals on our Internet and Intranet sites with information such as: domestic abuse from what it is, how to recognise it, how I can talk to somebody, how to make a basic safety plan where I can refer on to etc.
• The lbbd Internet has been updated in terms of our community members and people who may be accessing, looking for information, advice and guidance and support so that the website has been divided into professionals area and a community area and the content completely changed to try and give people and communities, the tools that they need to respond to domestic abuse issues as they're presenting to them.
• A domestic abuse learning and commissioning lead has been commissioned and will launch a learning and development programme from the 1^st April 2023.
• The council learning programme whereby the content of that programme is broad and wide-ranging, but ranges from things like what does barking and what does domestic abuse look like in Barking and Dagenham, with focuses on intersectionality’s, it has course on child and adolescent parent to violence and abuse. We have courses on the difference between domestic abuse and parental conflict.
• There is an additional enhanced offer in terms of learning development from our Cranston who will provide learning around how to work with perpetrators and how to assess perpetrators, what to do when working with perpetrators and where you can refer them to.
• A tool has been commissioned to help us assess the impact of domestic abuse on children and young people.
• The MARAC protocol has had complete refresh of that and several related processes and  pathways across the MARAC to other groups. Once approved this will be circulated and added to our Internet sites.

Commissioning Service Offer

Children and Young People -

• The Reset programme supports children and young people who are displaying concerning behaviours, either in terms of potential to become a perpetrator or potential to become a victim of domestic abuse.
• Domestic Abuse (locality workers) are sitting within the family hubs and support children and young people and building links into schools and youth clubs and places where people where young people are to have those conversations – this will help with early education work.
• An online and information advice and guidance and wellbeing service for children and young people is being created so that they can access support as they are impacted by domestic abuse, whether that be within parent or carer relationships or themselves.

Vulnerable Adults:

• IDVAS  ...  view the full minutes text for item 23.

• A domestic homicide incident occurred in the borough late last year
• The CSP were notified by the police for the need to complete a review whereby the CSP then wrote to the Home Office to tell them of our intent to conduct a review.
• The CSP have since put together a service spec for the DHR
• This specification went out through One Borough Voice and the link to this was shared to specific charities and organisations that conduct this work
• Standing Together have engaged and applied to conduct a basic DHR review, the contracts have been drafted and work on this will begin imminently in April.
• The funding for this review is from the CSP budget.
• Once the DHR chair is in post they will reach out to CSP board members to undergo the first meeting.

• There's been the prevent strategy review has been released from the Home Office there answer to that and it's outlining exactly what they're going to do.
• There's been a reduction in funding across London boroughs for the coming financial year and then the year after, including for Barking and Dagenham.
• As we’re entering Q4 so prevent have completed the projects that have been delivered and we're just in the process of evaluating the work that they've done and following up with that.
• Channel – there are currently 2 cases, monthly meetings are being carried out, with a new chair and continuing with current co-chair. There good attendance and partnership work and information sharing.
• New Projects – Brave and Connect Futures have delivered all workshops as expected  across a mix of Schools and LBBD staff. This is in an evaluation stage at the moment, there will be no more funded projects form the Home Office but we will continue to work with MOPAC to access suitable and appropriate programs they offer. We maintain links with WHUFC and Future Leaders programme to manage individuals who need continued support
• Training – LBBD, Schools and Partners (NHS, Probation, Police) receive training and knowledge around Prevent and Channel looking at making of referrals and how the process and system works and this continues. Number of discussions with schools has risen in line with this.
• Community Outreach – Schools, Religious institutes visits are supported by the Police to manage any questions, concerns and build confidence and relationships within the community.
• Risks – some groups are active locally but causing disruption rather than raising extremist views, Contact the Prevent co-ordinator for a full brief on current trends and concerns.
•  

The new CTLP has been released and is a London Wide document rather than looking at Boroughs individually and a short presentation can be offered on request

• 5-Year Substance Misuse Plan and Cultural Competencies Update – Amolak Tatter and Clare Brutton

• CCTV Update – David Lingard
• Serious Violence Duty Implementation Update – Chair of Serious Violence Duty Working Group (Fiona Taylor or Steven Calder)
• Community & Voluntary Sector Grants Programme Update
• Baroness Casey Review findings and action plan - Police Superintendent Neighbourhoods
• RESTRICTED - Domestic Homicide Review 
• RESTRICTED – Domestic Abuse Update – Angela D’urso
• RESTRICTED – Prevent Update – Simon Cornwall

Cllr Ghani announces that Chris Lyons is moving on from Barking and Dagenham Council, thanks him for all the work he has done, and wishes him well in his new role.

Chris Lyons responded that he has enjoyed working with colleagues within the borough and thanks all CSP board members for their well wishes.

Cllr Ghani notes that all the sub-group reports have been circulated to board members for reading.

Cllr Ghani notes that all the sub-group reports have been circulated to board members for reading.

Cllr Ghani notes that all the sub-group reports have been circulated to board members for reading.

Community Safety Partnership Board, 10:00am-14:00pm

Venue: Barking Learning Centre

Chair: Cllr Syed Ghani

Community Safety Partnership Board

Wednesday 28^th June 2023, 10:00am-13:00pm

BLC Conference Room

Chair: Stuart Bell