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Reducing Crime: the Home Office working with Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships

The National Audit Office has conducted an investigation into the relationship between the Home Office and Crime & Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs). If found that many of the projects runs by CDRPs and supported by the Home Office were diverse in nature, innovative and successful in reducing crime - but that the Home Office could do more to reduce the administrative burden on CDRPs, freeing up their time to concentrate on reducing crime.

Title: Reducing Crime: the Home Office working with Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships
Author: National Audit Office
Series: HC 16 Session 2004-2005
Number of pages: 52 (Summary = 8)
Date published: December 2004
Availability: Download full report PDF 624K, download summary PDF 130K

Main conclusions

  • Many of the projects funded by the Home Office have been diverse in nature, innovative and successful in reducing crime. In one successful project in Blackpool, for example, the partnership estimated that the initiative had prevented 262 crimes and led to a saving of over £200,000 plus improvements in people's quality of life.

  • The Home Office is to be congratulated on the range and diversity of the projects and initiatives it has supported. Although it is difficult to demonstrate direct cause and effect, the work of the Home Office Crime Reduction Directorate has contributed to the continuing reduction in crime reported by the British Crime Survey in recent years.

  • The Home Office could have achieved bigger reductions in crime by minimising the administrative work done by CDRPs, so that more money can be spent on successful crime prevention initiatives instead.

  • Partnerships have too often 'reinvented the wheel ' by not using lessons learned elsewhere.

  • CDRP resources have too often been tied up dealing with administration of different grant conditions imposed by the Home Office and other Departments. Smaller partnerships spent a higher proportion of their grant monies on staff costs.

  • The Home Office has put in place Local Delivery Agreements with two local authorities under which a wide range of separate grants have been pooled and a greatly simplified performance management system introduced.

  • The Home Office has also confirmed two further initiatives to reduce bureaucracy in 2005-06.The first is the plan to merge a number of separate streams of Home Office funding with further funding streams from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister into a single Safer and Stronger Communities Fund. The second is the launch of 21 Local Area Agreement pilots which will incorporate a still wider set of funding streams and draw together spending from the Home Office, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Department for Education and Skills and the Department of Health into three separate chapters, covering

    • Children and Young People

    • Safer and Stronger Communities

    • Healthier Communities and Older People

Recommendations

The report makes 9 recommendations:

  • The Home Office should encourage police and CDRPs to review what lessons they have learned by stating this requirement clearly in its grant conditions and by making future funding allocations dependent on having suitable project review arrangements in place.

  • The Home Office should encourage greater sharing of good practices and lessons learned between partnerships. Home Office Regional Directors in co-ordination with the Crime Reduction Centre should draw such information to the attention of partnerships.This could involve compiling a checklist of good practices and lessons learned for each main approach to crime reduction (such as working with potential victims or collecting information on crime patterns) so that key information is readily available for partnerships, police and regional Home Office staff to use.

  • Home Office regional teams should assess each proposed project against the proposed checklists of good practices and lessons learned as well as the four factors we identified as critical to success:

    • Is the project focused on crime reduction?

    • Has there been sufficient analysis to define and target the problem?

    • Is the project a logical solution in line with existing knowledge about crime reduction techniques?

    • Is the project of sufficient size to make a difference?

  • Home Office Regional Directors could encourage better project management by police and partnerships by compiling local lists of suitably skilled and experienced project managers for partnerships to use, closer monitoring of progress against milestones and by taking account of past performance in subsequent funding allocations.

  • Home Office Regional Directors should encourage each partnership to develop a strategic approach that will co-ordinate their projects so they can maximise their effectiveness in reducing crime. Building on the ten good practice criteria given in the report, the Home Office should give partnerships clear feedback on the quality of their current strategy and what it expects from the next round of strategies.

  • The Home Office should encourage smaller, neighbouring Partnerships to collaborate more closely - by sharing resources merging so that they can build up greater levels of expertise and resources to tackle crime. Encouragement could include making some grant allocations dependent upon evidence of closer working with neighbouring partnerships.

  • Home Office Regional Directors should build on their self assessment arrangements to improve their feedback to partnerships by giving regular performance reports comparing neighbouring partnerships.

  • The Home Office should simplify its funding arrangements further by standardising the terms and conditions of its grants and co-ordinating its funding allocations with those of other central government departments.

  • The Home Office should work closely with other central government departments and agencies to finalise grant conditions and funding arrangements well in advance of the start of the financial year.

Ten good practices

The report suggests a short checklist of criteria that the Home Office could use when assessing partnership's applications for funding, to ensure that the projects likely to achieve the greatest success are selected.

  1. The Mission Statement is clear, concise and relevant.

  2. Targets set are SMART (Specific, Measurable,Achievable,Realistic and Time-bound)and clearly aligned to priorities.

  3. The actions and interventions proposed are matched to targets.

  4. Funding streams are identified and non-Home Office funds have been considered.

  5. Long-term sustainability of the funding of interventions has been considered.

  6. The structure of the Partnership is defined and lead roles assigned by expertise and skills.

  7. The strategy is reviewed and updated annually.

  8. Priorities are supported by clear reference to crime and consultation data and partners ' plans..

  9. There is awareness of regional and national priorities and cohesion with neighbouring Partnerships.

  10. There is a balanced appraisal of the previous strategy and lessons learned.

Getting a copy

The report is available either in full (52 pages) or as an 8-page summary on the National Audit Office website.

Last update: 01 December 2004

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