Agenda and minutes

The Chairman welcomed all to the meeting.

The minutes were approved.

Apologies were received from Jamie Blake, Kiran Vagarwal, Simon Rose, Dina Sahmanovic and Laura Featley.

Superintendent Louis Smith attended the meeting on behalf of Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Rose.

Kenny Tang attended the meeting on behalf of Dina Sahmanovic.

The Chairman reported that a new MOPAC representative would attend the October meeting and would be the new point of contact – Jamie Keddy would be moving on.

·         Annual refresh of the Barnet Safer Community Partnership’s Community Safety Strategy

A report from the Barnet Community Safety Team was received.

Mr Clifton reported that the Strategy was reviewed annually, and priorities refreshed where needed, to reflect changes in crime and ASB trends as well as changes in the LB Barnet organisation. He asked for the Board’s comments and endorsement of the Strategy.

Proposed local changes to the Strategy as well as national changes were outlined in the report including:

·         Safeguarding of children and young people involved with or impacted by crime and ASB - additional objective focusing on violence, vulnerability and criminal exploitation following the Barnet OFSTED inspection

·         Continued focus on the safeguarding of vulnerable adults and children, supported by the collection of specific data

·         Increased partnership focus on preventing environmental crime – working with partners to deliver interventions that balance prevention and enforcement

·         Continued focus responding to violence against women and girls (VAWG)

·         Closer working with Re and Barnet Homes – the Director of Regulatory Services, Re and the Head of Housing Management, Barnet Homes were now statutory SCPB members

·         Increased focus on the role of public health within the SCP. Mental health and substance misuse continued to be a cross-cutting issue affecting victims and offenders. Public Health being part of the council presented an opportunity to strengthen joint working and to respond to areas such as substance misuse and mental health issues.

·         Police Borough Command Unit (BCU) merger with Barnet, Harrow and Brent; brought challenges as well as opportunities.

·         Reducing offending – changes in the National Probation Service (NPS) and the introduction of the Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) had impacted on performance, including in Barnet. HMIC inspection in 2017 in London showed that improvements had been made since 2016 but more needed to be done, especially around protecting the public and reducing reoffending. The Barnet Community Safety Team was working closely with the MPS, NPS and CRC to ensure effective partnership working to manage offenders, especially those who reoffend.

Ms Fiona Bateman welcomed the greater emphasis on safeguarding adults and added that a subgroup had been set up to focus on supporting victims; she suggested discussing outside the meeting how she could work with the Community Safety Team to achieve the priorities of both. She added that hate crime had been a high priority for the subgroup. Mr Clifton agreed that he would meet with Ms Bateman.

Action: Mr Clifton/Ms Bateman

Ms Djuretic noted that the focus on prevention was welcomed though it would be helpful to add to this by articulating the toxic impact of substance misuse on domestic violence and mental health problems. Mr Clifton noted that the full Strategy did include such detail.

Superintendent Louis Smith welcomed the amendment to the high-volume crime priority which makes it more explicitly focused on tackling Burglary as this is a key issue in Barnet.

Mr Leader noted that a lot of vulnerable people were impacted by crime in a less direct way, eg by fire. He wondered whether priority outcome 4 in the document could be explored in  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

·         Review of Barnet IOM

·         Partnership approach for IOM – the way forward

Mr Richard Norfolk, Reducing Reoffending Partnership Manager, reported.

The Reducing Reoffending Partnership Group’s Agreement (RRPG) had been refreshed and signed off. It had been agreed that meetings would be held weekly on a Thursday morning at Denmark House, beginning on 9^th August.

A project was underway to roll out an Institute of Offender Management (IOM) process at the LB Barnet; it had been found that a small number of individuals were involved in a disproportionately large amount of crime in the borough. The project would focus on helping offenders to break the cycle of crime and also identifying offenders and bringing them to justice more quickly.

Data was awaited to try to ensure that there was no duplication of effort when selecting the cohort to focus on. The ‘correct’ crime types to focus on (historically these had been the MOPAC crime types from City Hall) would be identified and then the Terms of Reference would be refreshed with new KPIs agreed.  The crime types would need to be in line with local priorities and cross-matched with the police; there needed to be buy-in from all the partners. Mr Norfolk stated that hopefully this data would be available by the time of the next meeting.

Mr Clifton added that the kind of offenders to focus on would need to be aligned with the Strategy and not just in relation to the volume of crime (but indeed taking into account the level of risk and harm caused). The Reducing Reoffending Delivery Group would meet every 8 weeks and would update the SCPB every quarter.

Ms Ansdell noted as mentioned above that an announcement had been made in the national news that morning that the retendering of the CRC contracts would be brought forward to 2020. CRC and NPS would be working more closely together in the future. There would also be 10 regions instead of 7; some of the current regions were too big. The aim was to develop closer and more local partnerships. The Senior Her Majesty’s Prisons and Probations Service (HMPPS) Leader would be responsible for both the CRC and the NPS. A period of consultation would follow the above proposals and Ms Ansdell would keep the SCPB updated.

·         The progress of delivery of the Prevent Action Plan

Mr Sam Rosengard, PREVENT Coordinator, spoke to his slides (Barnet Prevent Multi-agency Action Plan) which had been circulated with the agenda. There were 6 key actions in the plan.

1.    The Barnet Prevent Delivery Group meets quarterly and was well represented including input from Children’s and Adults’ Services, Probation Services, education providers including Middlesex University and other external partners.

The Barnet Channel Panel is chaired by the Community Safety Manager and meets monthly.  Channel is a programme providing support at an early stage to people identified as at risk of being drawn into terrorism.

2.    The Counter Terrorism Local Profile is produced annually and is communicated to key stakeholders and used to inform local action plans to reduce the risk of radicalisation and extremism. Barnet is part of a cluster including 4 neighbouring boroughs; there is an Action Plan in relation to 6 priority areas which is reviewed every quarter.

3.    The Action Plan is monitored by the SCPB and the Barnet Strategic Commissioning Board.

4.    Training is being delivered to local authority staff and staff operating across the Barnet partnership; many of Barnet’s staff worked with vulnerable people and so it was important that they are able to recognise signs of radicalisation.

Mr Rosengard was also working in the community with training plans being implemented. The Barnet Prevent Education Officer had offered training to all Barnet schools. Training would be carried out for Barnet Homes and Re. A trainer had been identified in Re but Barnet Homes did not so far have a trainer. Mr Coleman stated that he would speak with the training hub as this was due to capacity issues within Barnet Homes.  The Chairman noted that it was pivotal that Barnet Homes took this forward.

Action: Mr Coleman

Mr Rosengard reported that he had trained Barnet officers and managers including the Corporate Anti-Fraud Team (CAFT), CRC and NPS staff, staff at Barnet Mencap and had offered to train staff at Barnet MIND and the Westminster Drugs Project.

5.    Local procedures were being audited to ensure that systems were in place to risk assess Council venues to ensure that they are not being used to promote extremism. Schools would be asked to look at their IT systems to check for any extremist material. Home Office funding had been provided to look at supplementary non-regulated education providers in Barnet. Schools safeguarding audits were carried out annually. It was a priority to get in contact with all schools to offer them safeguarding advice and when a school contact the team with a safeguarding concern they used this as an opportunity. Mr Rosengard had regular contact with Middlesex University and Barnet Southgate College.

6.    Adopting pan-London procedures for safeguarding children and adults - ensuring that the Prevent duty is integrated into existing safeguarding strategies, policies and procedures. Barnet Family Services had produced a document with signposting to national procedures where any concerns were raised.

Mr Rosengard noted that NHS England had provided guidance and offered timely mental health  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

Standard agenda item, covering updates re:

·         Youth Justice Board

·         CSE

·         SARG

·         Troubled Families

·         Ofsted

Ms Tina McElligot, Operational Director, Family Services spoke to her slides which had been circulated.

Troubled Families

Barnet had attached more than its agreed number of families to the programme (as of June 2018, 3251 families had been attached, and 2220 was the target by 2020). It was not guaranteed that all would achieve ‘turnaround’ however. Barnet’s ‘turnaround’ figure was high, the third largest in London and the 5^th highest in the country. This had prompted a request for Barnet to share its model with other areas. A number of boroughs were struggling to make attachments so Barnet was considering undertaking work for other boroughs for which it would generate some income. The programme had a further 2 years to run and ‘turnaround’ stood at 45% of the target.

Youth Offending

Currently 73 young people were on statutory orders (92 at the time of the last SCPB meeting), 64% of these from BAME backgrounds and 95% being male. Males were overrepresented nationally.

The trend in youth offending in children had reduced – a number were being more successfully managed with fewer entering the criminal justice system. More data would be available at the next meeting.

68% of those on statutory orders were aged 15-17 and 45% required intensive supervision, with many home visits being undertaken and some of this cohort on tags.

There had been a reduction in the number of young people involved in gangs in Barnet.

The number of young people of Statutory School Age who were engaged in education, training or employment in Barnet was 76.9% - above the national average.

The number of first time entrants to crime had reduced in Barnet by 19% in 2017 – 218 per 100,000 population.  Reoffending numbers continued to reduce and Barnet was still outperforming all London boroughs.

The highest crime levels in young people were violence, drugs and motoring offences, including moped theft and driving without insurance.

Vulnerable Adolescents

This cohort comprised those known to the Youth Offending Team, and those known to go missing and at risk of criminal/sexual exploitation.

A younger age group were beginning to be targeted by professionals. 30% of the victims were white British and most were female. Xanax use increased their vulnerability.

Barnet had launched its Vulnerable Adolescents Strategy in April 2018 which continued the focus on disruption activities around sexual and criminal exploitation. Recently the team had focused on hotels as young people had been able to make bookings for ‘partying’ and had also entered with adults who were exploiting them. The team was carrying out a piece of work in this area including some education and mystery shopping to try to ensure that hotels understood their responsibilities.

The team was also working with a popular fast-food restaurant chain, asking for the opportunity to engage with young people in a safe space rather than moving the issues elsewhere.

Every missing young person was tracked and a record kept of the frequency and duration of episodes by the multi-agency partnership. Those who  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8.

·         Standing agenda item – Performance dashboard update on performance and crime trends

Mr Clifton presented his slides on crime and ASB figures (circulated with the agenda).

Burglaries had increased in Barnet in the past 12 months, though the trend in London overall was upwards. In Barnet the number of burglaries was the 4^th highest in London per population. This was mainly residential burglary but non- residential burglary was on an upward trend.

Robbery was also on an upward trend in London; for Barnet this was 1/3 higher than a year ago. However Barnet had had the 7^th lowest number of robberies out of all London boroughs.

Barnet stood 2^nd lowest in London in its rate of violence. There had been a 32% reduction in knife injury from a year ago and also a reduction in the number of gun discharges.

Mr Coleman added that the level of ASB was 2.4 per 1000 households and this was fewer than the previous financial year. This was the 2^nd lowest number of ASB cases in London per 1000 households.

·         Progress report on the Partnership response to persistent Anti-Social Behaviour hotspot locations

·         Community Safety and Public Health joint working

·         Youth matters update on Troubled Families, and cohorts were there are links to the Safer Communities Partnership Strategy – including Domestic Violence, Crime and ASB and demand pressures.

·         MOPAC update for Barnet SCPB Partnership

·         Update on the Partnership approach to delivering an evidence base for the Community Safety Strategy

·         Youth Justice Board update

·         Performance Update

·         Update from the Barnet Reducing Burglary Delivery Group

The Board approved the items for the next meeting:

·         Progress report on the Partnership response to persistent Anti-Social Behaviour hotspot locations

·         Community Safety and Public Health joint working

·         Youth matters update on Troubled Families, and cohorts were there are links to the Safer Communities Partnership Strategy – including Domestic Violence, Crime and ASB and demand pressures.

·         MOPAC update for Barnet SCPB Partnership

·         Update on the Partnership approach to delivering an evidence base for the Community Safety Strategy

·         Youth Justice Board update

·         Performance Update

·         Update from the Barnet Reducing Burglary Delivery Group

None.

Friday 26 October, 10:00 hrs.