Joining up at the front line

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Newcastle was one of 12 areas in the country to be invited to give workshops at an international conference in London earlier this year. The conference ‘Joining up at the front line - How to effectively integrate neighbourhood policing and neighbourhood management’ was run by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA).

Newcastle’s Denton SNAPS was invited to run the workshops through our Exemplar status, which is in recognition of our excellent model of partnership working at a neighbourhood level. The workshops were given by Adele Bradley, Safe Newcastle’s site lead for Exemplar; Inspector Mick Farrell and Newcastle City Council’s Lisa Rake.

The conference itself saw speeches by David Hanson, Minister for Policing; Chief Constable Peter Neyroud, NPIA Chief Executive and Les Lawrence, Chair of the Local Government Association (LGA) Safer Communities Board. Following the VIPs were presentations from international colleagues:

• Hungary talked about dealing with tensions involving Roma communities;
• Slovakia demonstrated how they had tackled signal crimes in Stalinist high-rise blocks in Bratislava;
• Poland showed how they were establishing community partnerships in Ladz;
• France outlined how they were tackling youth crime through neighbourhood partnerships and empowerment in Mulhouse;
• Brazil explained how they had reduced the murder rate in Sao Paulo from 489 per year to 88 in their 2km square neighbourhood through developing a community library, enabling interaction with local police.

The learning from the 12 Exemplar sites – Newcastle, Hartlepool, Halifax, Hull, Manchester, Blackpool, Warrington, Gloucester, Redruth, Lambeth and Milton Keynes – were incorporated into the Government’s Safe and Confident Neighbourhoods strategy. The key principles of this strategy are:

• Strong local leadership
• Clearly defined and agreed neighbourhoods
• Shared and publicly agreed priorities
• Shared information, feedback and communication processes
• Co-location where possible
• Multi-agency problem solving teams
• Evidence-based deployment
• Joint engagement
• Nominated neighbourhood lead

As a thank you to the 12 sites for taking part in the year-long Exemplar programme, a special dinner was hosted at the famous Peeler’s restaurant in New Scotland Yard, where each site was presented with a plaque.

The learning from the Exemplar sites will be captured in the ‘Developing Neighbourhood Partnerships’ guidance currently being written by the NPIA.