Agenda and minutes

RESOLVED:

That the minutes of the meeting held on the 13^th December be agreed as an accurate record of proceedings.

Councillor Dacres declared a personal interest in item 9 as she was working on an IT project with the Ministry of Justice.

There are no response to referrals due at this meeting.

There were no responses to referrals due at this Committee.

4.1       Chief Inspector Andy Carter, Metropolitan Police, gave a presentation to the Committee. During his presentation and in response to questions from the Committee, the following key points were highlighted: 

·         The current model of 32 Borough Commands corresponding to London Boroughs would change to 12 Borough Command Units from November 2018.

·         Lewisham would merge with Greenwich and Bexley and the new BCU Commander would be Chief Superintendent Simon Dobinson, the current Borough Commander for Greenwich.

·         The 24:7 999 Policing would be run from Lewisham and Bexley.

·         It was acknowledged that Lewisham Police Station was and would remain very busy. There would be occasions where there was likely to be queueing.

·         Neighbourhood Police officers would remain with the current two officers per ward in Lewisham. They would only be removed from their wards in extreme circumstances such as in response to a terrorist event or on a New Year’s Eve.

·         The changes had been driven by the challenging budgetary pressures on the Metropolitan Police.

·         Committee members and Chief Inspector Carter discussed Safer Neighbourhood Ward Panel Meetings and the potential to work together with Councillors and local assemblies in the future. Further discussions would take place to include getting Councillors’ views on how ward panels could best involve and work with the local community.  It would be important to consider aspects such as the venue, date and time and capacity of those organising the panel meetings. There was a panel chair’s meeting in June where ideas could be further discussed.

·         Reports from Safer Neighbourhood Panels to Lewisham Local Assemblies had improved and were very helpful.

·         Crime statistics from the Police would still be available on a ward by ward basis. Chief Inspector Carter would update the Committee as to whether the statistics would continue to be able to be provided on a borough by borough basis after the merge.

4.2       RESOLVED:

That the report be noted and Chief Inspector Carter be thanked for attending and presenting to the Committee.

5.1       Becky Canning, National Probation Service (NPS) and Lucien Spencer, Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) presented their update report to the Committee. During their presentation and in the discussion that followed, the following key points were highlighted:

·         The 2016 HMIP inspection of work in the NPS and CRC made three recommendations for improvement: Improve the quality of court work; improve public protection; improve the relationship between NPS and CRC.

·         There had been significant improvements made over the last year including having 60% of reports prepared on the day of the magistrates’ request when it previously took about 3 weeks.

·         There was work on improving public protection such as: themed case audits; improved working relationships with the CRC; and mandatory safeguarding and domestic abuse training for all staff.

·         There was an HMIP inspection in September 2017 across London. The findings included the following: public protection work was evaluated as good, reducing reoffending rates were variable and more focus was needed; abiding by sentence was judged to be sufficient; meeting diversity needs was judged as weaker in particular for women.

·         The following recommendations were made by the inspection: to improve information sharing for safeguarding; to improve services for women; to promote better understanding of accessing services; and to improve support for newly qualified officers.  

·         The CRC worked based in community teams. Lewisham, Bexley and Croydon were grouped together. There were currently 3000 open cases, 900 of which were in Lewisham. The majority of these were community orders or suspended sentences and the main areas were burglary and domestic abuse.

·         There were a number of problems with the original contract and subsequent delivery model for the NPS. Serious and significant concerns had been picked up in the 2016 HMIP inspection and since this time the contract had been renegotiated back into a geographical-based model.

·         The average caseload had reduced to 55 per staff member which was lower than the HMIP inspection requirement and supervision had improved.

·         The recent inspection report would be published shortly and would show significant improvement across the CRC.

·         A number of investments had been made to meet recommendations. These included: investment in a new case management system; significant investment across estates; and continuing to develop work with female service users which made up around 10% of service users.

·         Members of the Committee felt the report could be written more clearly and include additional data such as KPIs (key performance indicators). Future reports would take these concerns on-board. The data provided may be cluster based.

5.2       RESOLVED:

That future reports should be clearer and include more performance data as well as qualitative information.

6.1       Geeta Subramaniam-Mooney, Head of Public Protection and Safety, gave a presentation to the Committee outlining crime statistics in Lewisham, a copy of which is included in the agenda documentation. In the discussion that followed, the following key points were raised:

·         The use of visuals in the presentation was welcomed by the Committee who found it comprehensive and accessible and were very impressed with the report.

·         Further analysis based on age group of perpetrators could be provided to the Committee.

·         The work of the Crime Reduction Team had been focussed around the following four key areas: stop the violence campaign; universal schools safety programme including the launch of the 5 key messages leaflets; trauma-informed approaches and trusted adult models; and partnership approach to operations taking individuals off the street.

·         There were concerns regarding the rise in gun crime across London.

·         The location of crimes was based on where the incident was recorded and not where it took place. Therefore there could appear to be concentrations around Police Stations or hospitals. 

·         In terms of violence against women and girls, there were 436 cases of peer on peer abuse currently active. There were concerns about the numbers of victims of domestic violence who were repeat victims either from the same or multiple perpetrators.

·         The Council had worked with the Jimmy Mizen Foundation looking at perceptions of crime and threat felt by children of different ages. Shifts in children to adult ratios in certain spaces could make them much safer feeling for young people. For example having more adults on busses could make it feel much safer.

·         The Crime Reduction Service had undertaken workshops on unconscious bias and were now implementing "blind" case audits for the Youth Offending Service which could be taken up by other agencies.

·         Comments were raised regarding the potential for new buildings and developments to have a positive or negative effect on community cohesion. A concern was raised regarding Convoy's Wharf having the potential to impact young people's lives and deepen social division.

·         Members of the Committee thanked Geeta and her team for the presentation.

6.2       RESOLVED:

That the report be noted.

7.1       Paul Aladenika presented the report to the Committee. During his presentation and in the discussions that followed, the following key points were raised:

·         The new approach to equalities reporting in the CES 2016-20 focused on equalities within 5 Council strategic plans; Safer Lewisham Plan 2015-17; Housing Strategy 2015-20; Work and Skills Strategy 2015-17; Health and Well-being Strategy 2015-18; and the Children's and Young People's Plan 2015-18. This was felt to be an improved approach compared to having 9 strands based on each protected characteristic.

·         It would be helpful to have more of the public health data available based on protected characteristics. This had not always been available but discussions would continue as to whether further breakdowns were possible.

7.2       RESOLVED:

That the report be noted

8.1       Paul Gale, Local Assemblies Manager and Winston Costello, Community Enterprise Manager presented the report to the Committee. During their presentation and in the discussion that followed the following key points were raised:

·         Standing orders were suspended at 9.20pm.

·         Comments were raised as to whether there was potential for Local Assemblies to have a more community empowering role.

·         There could be more done on the grants process to ensure there was feedback on projects and to ensure more high quality bids.

·         All assembly funded projects are required to submit monitoring before the end of November the following financial year. As part of the monitoring process, Assembly Officers are encouraged to visit the projects to see how the award is benefiting the community. In addition, the grant recipients will often attend an assembly to ‘report back’ on the project at a later date.

·         Projects funded by Local Assemblies should be branded as such so local communities could see the impact.

8.2       RESOLVED:

            That the report be noted.

9.1       Geeta Subramaniam-Mooney, introduced the report to the Committee. During the presentation and subsequent discussion, the following key points were highlighted:

·         The work on disproportionality at Lewisham included reviewing and responding to Baroness Young’s Review on Improving Outcomes for Young Black and Muslim Men in the Criminal Justice System and undertaking a workshop on this theme led by Baroness Young.

·         It also included looking at the statistics on disproportionality in Lewisham and working on this with partners to look at perceptions, language and potential unconscious bias as well as looking at the Lammy Review in detail to understand what lessons could be taken for Lewisham.

·         Further consideration of the trauma-informed approach and how that fitted in with looking at unconscious bias was being undertaken.

·         The Youth Offending Service (YOS) would be developing a toolkit to undertake “blind” case audits without seeing background information on individual’s ethnicity/gender etc.

·         The YOS and Crime Reduction Team were undertaking a programme focussing on unconscious bias. This was also being undertaken by members of the Safer Lewisham Partnership Board.

9.2       RESOLVED:

            That the report be noted.

10.1    Gary Connors, Strategic Community Safety Services Manager, presented the report to the Committee. During the presentation and discussion the following key points were noted:

·         The Community Coordinator role was funded by the Home Office and focused on overseeing the coordination of the Council’s work on counter-extremism.

·         The report highlighted the key aspects of the role and achievements. It included lots of work with community groups and faith groups and also helped community groups successfully bid for funds such as the Stronger Britain Together Fund.

·         Intersectionality within communities was always considered and was an important priority.

·         The service was aware of a church where concerns had been raised about offensive attitudes to the LGBT community. This had been highlighted to the Home Office through Prevent and through anti Hate Crime work.

·         A member of the Committee highlighted that a high proportion of people did not have a faith and work should also be focused on those without a faith. The Committee heard that work was on-going with non-religious groups but there could be more focus in this area.

10.2    RESOLVED

            That the report be noted.

11.1    Katie Wood, Scrutiny Manager, introduced the report to the Committee. The following comments were noted in the discussion:

·         The Committee could consider the Council’s position on Modern Day Slavery as part of the 2018/19 work programme.

11.2    RESOLVED

That the report be noted and the possibility of looking at the Council’s position on Modern Day Slavery be considered when setting the work programme for 2018/19.

There were no referrals to Mayor and Cabinet.