Crime Reduction - Helping to Reduce Crime in Your Area

Keeping Section 17 on the Agenda [2/5]

From theory to reality - an effective framework

With a population of around 230,000 people, Havering is the second largest borough in Greater London. Located in the north east of London, it is currently undergoing significant changes as part of the regeneration of the Thames Gateway area. This involves investment in specific areas of the borough and addressing core concerns including education, environment, housing, crime and the fear of crime.

The borough has taken a four step approach to implementing Section 17, with the aim of putting community safety at the heart of the local authority’s business, and encouraging other public services - and the community itself -to do the same.

These steps cover:

• management arrangements

• information gathering

• implementation

• monitoring, reviewing and evaluating

Step 1 - Management arrangements

In 2001, Havering first set up a steering group to lead its Section 17 activity. This group was made up of five senior officers: the executive director with portfolio responsibility for community safety; the head of corporate business management; a head of service who took the strategic lead; the community safety manager who took the lead in training; and a service area manager.

The steering group established contact with key officers within legal services, human resources, financial services and best value, as well as all heads of service, to help advise and take forward its work.

The Havering steering group's terms of reference to develop and implement the local authority’s mainstreaming policy to lead on the development of techniques and tools for mainstreaming to promote Section 17 to staff, elected members and partner agencies by providing and disseminating information and knowledge to authorise or recommend the review of specific services that could contribute to Section 17 to monitor Section 17 work and recommend improvements to the corporate management team

Step 2 - Information gathering

One of the challenges for the steering group was in knowing where to begin in implementing Section 17.

The group took as its starting point the local CDRP’s crime and disorder audit, strategy and action plans. The local community safety priorities, trends and hot spots set out in the audit, strategy and plans helped to identify the key service areas where implementation of Section 17 should begin, and which officers needed to champion community safety.

Step 3 - Implementation

The authority saw its framework for taking mainstreaming from theory to reality as a vital tool for achieving community safety. Its next step was to implement, integrate and monitor the three elements of policy and strategy formulation, raising awareness and service development as part of an overall action plan.

Developing effective policies and strategies

Making crime and disorder reduction a core business activity depends on effective policy development. The local authority was aware that community safety was a major issue for local people, so, along with its partners, it made creating safer communities a key priority in the Havering Community Plan.

This approach was backed up by incorporating community safety into all types and levels of corporate, departmental, best value and partnership plans.

Key elements in Havering’s policies and strategies making community safety and crime reduction a key result area for all departments ensuring community safety is considered at each stage of the policy making cycle, in terms of issue identification, option appraisal, decision-making, resource allocation and implementation requiring existing and new policies and strategies to be reviewed to ensure they fully address Section 17 identifying existing systems and mechanisms that support mainstreaming encouraging comments on external policies and strategies that impact on community safety

Raising awareness

Havering identified that responding effectively to Section 17 meant raising awareness about community safety and providing relevant training for senior officers, middle managers, frontline staff and elected members. External partners were also invited to this training, to encourage mainstreaming approaches in other agencies.

The local authority contacted its Service Management Teams to encourage them to contribute to its Section 17 training and awareness raising scheme. It then developed a training programme for all officers and council members, and set up bespoke sessions for service areas considered key to mainstreaming and the crime and disorder reduction strategy. Where possible, this training was linked to best value training.

Objectives of raising awareness explaining and publicising the implications of Section 17 and of community safety highlighting opportunities and constraints related to implementing Section 17 encouraging officers and elected members to share information and good practice on community safety, and identifying officers in service areas who can spread the community safety message to colleagues allowing staff to assess their service policy and delivery from a community safety dimension, and enabling staff to identify activities within their service that can help to achieve community safety incorporating community safety principles into staff recruitment, induction, performance appraisal, retention and development in the future

The authority promoted information on this work both internally, through its own website, newsletters, briefings and posters, and externally, to the public and local partners via the media, publications and displays. The Community Safety Manager has followed up the training programme with regular updates on Section 17 work and by acting as a point of reference for enquiries. The unit is now considering the publication of a good practice training guide for staff and elected members.

Developing services

As a major service provider, Havering aims to build community safety into its regular, day-to-day service activities and performance management system. This complements other initiatives like best value, and drives continuous improvement in the delivery of quality services.

The authority began by piloting the service development approach in three areas: the housing service, the youth service and trading standards. It then engaged the services that were most likely to achieve positive gains through Section 17 and those that featured most in the crime and disorder reduction strategy. This approach was then cascaded to other service areas.

Building Section 17 into service development including community safety objectives in service plans auditing all service areas to identify current and future activity that impacts on community safety integrating community safety into best value reviews of service areas encouraging service areas to review and refocus their services, and introduce new policies and operational ways of working to support community safety empowering staff to implement changes to working practices that will improve community safety establishing service area community safety performance indicators and targets which are ‘smart’ (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-tabled) assigning key officers to champion community safety in specific service areas incorporating a community safety perspective in all community and partner consultations on specific service functions

Step 4 - Monitoring, reviewing and evaluating

Havering is now developing monitoring, review and evaluation systems to assess the effectiveness of this work. The authority’s Business Monitoring Unit is supporting this process by developing performance indicators and a checklist of actions for service areas to measure community safety outcomes. An overview and scrutiny committee will, in turn, review this work.

Section 17 work is also subject to an annual review. This involves analysing local crime trends, consulting key stakeholders and making recommendations to improve effectiveness.

Outcomes of this approach

The framework put in place by Havering has proved both inclusive and responsive to local community needs. It is also sustainable and less dependent on short-term projects and initiatives than other models. Among immediate and future benefits, the approach has:

• enabled the authority to produce a corporate strategy implementing Section 17

• involved all service areas in working towards making Havering a safer place

• equipped staff to help prevent crime and disorder through their service delivery

• encouraged an approach to crime and disorder reduction based on rigorous performance management, evaluation, learning and continuous improvement

>> Next Section: Implemention Section 17: benefits and constraints

Last update: 09/07/03