Home Office Good Practice Seminars
Violent Crime Seminar
Workshops - 16 September
Workshop 4
Managing the Night-time Economy
Chris Smith, West End Hot Box Co-ordinator, Westminster Council
Chris Smith gave a presentation on the West End Hot Box initiative to reduce problems occurring during the night time. This 24 hour area in the city introduced Civic Watch to improve the sense of public safety and community confidence by tackling anti-social behaviour, improving the environment and signposting support for young people and others at risk.
Civic Watch, which started in September 2003 as a 6 month project, is accountable to the leader of the council, borough police and fire commanders, and the chief executive of City West Homes.
According to a survey conducted in the area, people felt unsafe at night because of beggars and drunks etc. Further analysis identified the areas of concern and set the perimeter for the Hot Box area to be tackled through Civic Watch.
Accurate and timely intelligence is gathered on a daily basis, and the team meet every week to monitor environmental issues along with incidences of crime and disorder and fire. Effective tactics to address these issues include rapid deployment of personnel and resources to deal with litter collection 3 times per day in the West End, repair and improvement of street lighting, targeting buskers where there are rich gathering opportunities for pick pockets etc., illegal street trading, street drinking, noise nuisance. Methods used include prosecutions, seizures and injunctions, dispersal orders, overt videoing, high visibility patrolling, drinking control zones, business watch and more.
Successes in the Piccadilly Circus area include reduced busking, reduced street drinking and illegal street trading, no rough sleepers, reduced begging.
Leicester Square area saw the introduction of door supervisor checks, police licensing inspectors, CCTV, city guardians, pub watch, drinking control zone, Black Cab marshalling scheme, cards advertising prostitutes services removed from phone boxes and sent to BT where call barring was implemented on the numbers, and more.
Successes in Leicester Square include the fact that prostitutes cards are very rarely found in phone boxes, begging has dramatically reduced and busking is infrequent.
The Jill Dando institute are conducting an evaluation of the project and it is hoped that it will be expanded from the existing four areas to 12 in the near future.
After the presentation the groups discussed some of the good practice around the country to improve public safety. The main points that arose were as follows:
Staggered closing times for clubs
Last entry times
Late night buses
ASB and off sales to minors – remove licence – link to lottery sales, involve Camelot and withdraw concession if premises are not suitable or desirable
Onsite drug testing
Licensed door staff
Alcohol arrest referral
The PowerPoint presentation will be available in the near future.
Last update: 08 December 2004