Agenda and minutes

Venue: Hendon Town Hall, The Burroughs, London NW4 4BQ

Contact: Tracy Scollin 020 8359 2315 Email: tracy.scollin@barnet.gov.uk 

Note: This meeting will be paper light. Please download the meeting documents prior to arrival as very limited papers will be available 

Items
No. Item

1.

Welcome and Introductions

Minutes:

The Chairman welcomed all. He welcomed Sara Leach in her new role as  Head of the North West Command Unit, Metropolitan Police.

2.

Apologies for Absence

Minutes:

Apologies were received from Clare Ansdell, Simon Rose, Kiran Vagarwal and Sepia Golding.

3.

Minutes of Previous Meeting pdf icon PDF 106 KB

Minutes:

The minutes were approved as an accurate record.

4.

Matters Arising

Minutes:

None.

5.

Update on the findings of the 2018/19 Community Safety Strategic Assessment pdf icon PDF 183 KB

Relevant to all priority areas of the Community Safety Strategy

 

Sepia Golding

Senior Partnership Performance

Barnet Council

 

Peter Clifton

Community Safety Manager

Minutes:

Peter Clifton, Community Safety Manager, spoke to the report on the Barnet Community Safety Strategic Assessment in relation to the key priorities of the Strategy:

 

·         According to the 2017 Residents Perception Survey, residents’ top antisocial behaviour (ASB) concerns were ‘rubbish and litter lying around’ and ‘people using or dealing drugs’. There had been an increase in reports relating to environmental crimes including littering, flytipping and illegal encampments.

 

Mr Clifton reported that the Community Safety MARAC (A Barnet multi-agency problem panel that met regularly to review the most persistent and complex ASB cases) had been working with around 30 ASB cases per month. Also a range of partnership activity was ongoing including introducing Community Space Protection Orders eg in areas of persistent street drinking. There had been a 40% increase in the number of fixed penalty notices issued for littering and a 570% increase in notices issued for flytipping (April 2017-March 2018).

 

·         Mr Clifton reported that the Partnership had been increasingly vocal over the past year and had taken strong steps to keep engaged with the community. This had included more use of Barnet First with articles every quarter on issues such as VAWG, burglary and environmental crime. The Partnership had also delivered leaflets and held street-based engagements in crime hotspots. 

 

The Partnership had invested in the Online Watch Link (OWL) system; this was updated with the latest crime prevention advice from the police and Neighbourhood Watch. Over 12500 residents had signed up to OWL.

 

·         VAWG – Barnet’s rate of domestic violence and abuse is the 4th lowest of the 32 London boroughs though there had been a 12% increase in domestic abuse offences recorded by the police over the past year.

 

·         Violent crime has fallen in the Barnet over the past year, for the first time in a number of years. Barnet has the second lowest rate of violent crime with injury in London.

 

·         During 2017/18 the REACH (Resilient, Engaged, Achieving Children) team had been working with an average of 26 vulnerable young people each quarter. These included children displaying vulnerabilities to child sexual exploitation, Gang Serious Youth Violence (GSYV); missing persons episodes or harmful sexualised behaviour. Family Services has also overseen the delivery of preventative school engagement work.

 

·         Sustained reductions in offending and re-offending – the adult re-offending rate in Barnet was 26.3% for 2018 – an increase compared to the same period the previous year. The Barnet Enhanced Reducing Offending Project was working to enhance the effectiveness of the Barnet Integrated Offender Management Scheme and strengthen the partnership approach to reducing offending.

 

·         Sustained reductions in high-volume crime types (burglary in Barnet) – interventions included ANPR cameras and joint working with OWL and Neighbourhood Watch. The Barnet Burglary Reduction Partnership Group had promoted burglary-related crime prevention advice to residents using social media, articles in Barnet First and direct messages via the OWL system.

 

·         Supporting the borough’s diverse communities – Barnet Prevent Strategy launched in 2017/18; Zero Tolerance to Hate Crime project.

 

 

Ms Bateman noted that the Safeguarding Adults  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

6.

Update on the Barnet Zero Tolerance to Hate Crime Project pdf icon PDF 179 KB

·         Relevant to Priority 2 and 7 of the Community Safety Strategy

 

Ray Booth

Chief Executive, Barnet Mencap

 

Reshma Hirani

Hate Crime Awareness Coordinator

 

Minutes:

Mr Clifton and Ms Reshma Hirani, Hate Crime Awareness Coordinator, spoke to a report on the Barnet Zero Tolerance to Hate Crime Project.

 

The Project was in its second year. One of its aims was to contribute to addressing the issue of under-reporting of Hate Crime by increasing the confidence of victims. It also aimed to support victims of ASB, domestic violence and VAWG and improve access to justice for disabled people.

 

Numerous organisations including Barnet Homes and Homeless Action Barnet had been given staff training. The Reporting Centre staff and other voluntary and community organisations had effective communication links and there had been an increase in the number of Hate Crime incidents being reported over the past year.

 

The partnership organised Hate Crime Awareness Week in October 2018 (another would follow in October 2019) promoting the message ‘Barnet- say no to Hate Crime’. Over 250 Barnet residents had signed up to be Hate Crime Awareness Champions.

 

Barnet Mencap had produced a leaflet on Hate Crime reporting which had been circulated to Barnet Metropolitan Police and to the Reporting Centres.

Several partners had updated their websites to include reporting on reporting Hate Crime, including Barnet Homes and Barnet Mencap.

 

The Barnet Hate Crime Awareness Forum was held quarterly at Barnet Mencap. The Chairman asked whether the Forum had had feedback on what the obstacles to reporting were. Ms Hirani stated that often people were unsure what could be categorised as Hate Crime and whether they had sufficient evidence. Staff were being trained to enable them to identify Hate Crime, including in the NHS, universities and housing associations. The Awareness Week had been a starting point and the Project would like to provide more online resources. Mr Clifton noted that the SCPB and the Safeguarding Adults Board had identified the issue of underreporting; now there was a common set of aims, shared training and awareness of the services to refer to. Reporting of Hate Crime had enabled police to direct their resources where needed and the Project had helped to raise awareness of why reporting was important.

 

Ms Hirani reported that a victim impact survey would be carried out in 2019 during which she hoped to speak to a cross section of victims about the process. There was evidence that the workshops did raise awareness although reporting numbers remained low.

 

Ms Bateman noted that there should be a focus also on perpetrators, for example, as had been the case for raising awareness on domestic abuse. Ms Hirani would feed this back and hopefully the campaign could include this. Ms Mukhati noted that it would be helpful to see whether the CRC’s work with perpetrators could be aligned with that of the Hate Crime Awareness Project. Mr Clifton would see what could be done in the Hate Crime Working Group.

Action: Ms Hirani/Mr Clifton

 

7.

Family Services pdf icon PDF 482 KB

·         Troubled Families

·         Cohorts were there are links to the Safer Communities Partnership Strategy – including Domestic Violence and VAWG, Crime and ASB and demand pressures

 

Tina McElligott

Assistant Director, Family Services

Minutes:

Ms Tina McElligot was not in attendance. Her slides were received.

8.

London Fire Brigade Update to SCPB pdf icon PDF 652 KB

·         Current LFB performance Barnet

·         Emerging trends/patterns in Barnet, volume of different kinds of fires etc.

·         What the challenges are

·         Key areas for partnership to focus on re these challenges

 

Steve Leader

London Fire Brigade

Borough Commander for Barnet

Minutes:

Mr Steve Leader, Borough Commander, LFB spoke to his slides.

 

Performance was being recorded on a new system which made it easier to interrogate the fire service data. This would make it easier to gauge where fires were likely to occur so that plans could be put in place to try to reduce the fire incidents in those locations.

 

Recently two arson offences had been reported to the Community MARAC and work was ongoing with those individuals. It was hoped that this would reduce the future number of arson offences.

 

Shops, sheltered housing and care homes were at higher than average risk of fire incidents. There had been a number of false alarms due to Automatic Fire Alarms and any building with more than one activation was highlighted for a visit from the fire service to look at the systems in place.

 

Ms Bateman noted that the Safeguarding Adults Board would hold a safeguarding event on 4th April – it would be helpful to have some case studies on ‘hoarding’ for this. Mr Leader stated that it could be difficult to persuade hoarders to allow a visit so building trust was important.

 

The London Fire Brigade had recently introduced smoke hoods which could help victims of a fire by protecting them from the effects of smoke inhalation.

 

Mr Leader reported that since the Grenfell fire residents were reacting differently in high-rise buildings; they were more likely to leave a building on fire than they would have pre-Grenfell. This made it difficult to account for occupants and could often make it difficult for the fire service to move around the buildings. The government had introduced new requirements on cladding for new buildings and for those buildings where cladding had been removed. In Scotland this had been taken further with additional sound alerts in flats, dual staircases and fire suppression systems.

 

Mr Blake enquired about refuse fires in Barnet. Mr Leader responded that these could be difficult crimes to solve and were often bin fires after pub closing times which were concentrated in certain areas and were low in number. The fire service had worked in the past to highlight individuals and this had helped. More incidents occurred in the summer months. He agreed that piles of rubbish being in place could be a temptation for certain individuals.

 

Ms Kauser Mukhtar noted that the CRC routinely carried out home visits to assess fire safety for certain individuals using a fire risk assessment tool, often whilst visiting clients for other reasons. Ms Bateman would contact Ms Mukhtar about this.

Action: Ms Fiona Bateman

 

Mr Leader noted that the Fire Brigade would always been keen to be informed about individuals where signs of risk were identified, such as cigarette marks, mobility issues, dementia, multiple plugs.  

 

 

 

 

9.

Performance Update pdf icon PDF 333 KB

Standing item – performance dashboard update on performance and crime trends

 

Sepia Golding

Senior Partnership Performance

Barnet Council

 

Minutes:

Mr Clifton spoke to his report.

 

There had been an 8% increase in burglary in the last 12 months and a larger increase in the number of robberies of 26% during that time. Theft from sheds had recently been included as ‘residential’ burglary under the new rules.

 

There had also been a slight increase in knife injury offences (17%) and 5 gun discharges in the past year (increased from 2 the previous year).

Violent crime 20% red in ¼

 

There had been a slight decrease in the number of domestic violence incidents reported and also in the number ASB reports.

 

The Chairman asked about the spike in the number of burglaries. Mr Clifton noted that this was typical in Barnet and other outer London Boroughs during the winter months. This jump usually began in October.

 

Superintendent Leach noted that after a spate of burglaries and input from the Organised Crime Unit some individuals had been arrested; it had been found that the spate was almost exclusively due to those individuals.

 

The Chairman stated that the warnings about burglary seemed to have reduced. Superintendent Leach noted that these usually had an impact and agreed to reinvigorate this with more communication and partnership working.

Action: Superintendent Leach

 

 

 

10.

Forward Work Plan pdf icon PDF 203 KB

Minutes:

The Committee noted and approved the Forward Work Plan.

 

The Reducing Offending Update would be added.

 

Ms Bateman suggested that the summary of the work of the Adults and Safeguarding Committee and the Children, Education and Safeguarding Committee be added. The Chairman would discuss this with Mr Clifton and Ms Vagarwal.

Action: Chairman, Ms Vagarwal, Mr Clifton

11.

Any Other Business

Minutes:

None.

12.

Date of Next Meeting

Minutes:

Friday 12 April 2019, 10:00 hrs