Agenda and draft minutes

1.            The Chairman welcomed Members of the Committee and the guests to this meeting of the Crime and Disorder Committee.

2.            Mr Hill introduced the Community Safety Agreement, giving a brief overview of the history of the Kent Community Safety Partnership (KCSP).  He explained that the Safe and Stronger Communities programme run in Kent, had been set up by the then Chief Constable of Kent Police David Phillips and KCC Chief Executive Mike Pitt. This was used as a model nationally to shape the development of top tier Community Safety Partnerships, which meant that Kent was in an excellent position when they were formally introduced in 2006.

3.            Mr Hill explained that the KCSP was made up of the six responsible authorities who also provided the principle funding for community safety activity in Kent.  Kent Police, District & Borough Councils, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), Kent Fire & Rescue Service and Kent, Surrey and Sussex Community Rehabilitation Company now all had a statutory responsibility to co-operate and develop joint plans to tackle shared priorities.

4.            Mr Beaumont, Head of Community Safety and Emergency Planning, delivered a detailed presentation on the Community Safety Agreement.

5.            Key points made by Mr Beaumont included;

·         The main achievements of 2014 had been the development of an anti-social behaviour (ASB) strategy linked with THEMIS, an ASB case management system.  The latter assisting in sharing case information with other authorities and agencies to improve joint working as well has charting issues relating to repeat victims such as vulnerabilities that impact on their risk assessment.

·         The implementation of the Community Trigger process which required  the relevant agencies in the CSP to respond when three complaints were received from a victim of ASB.

·         Progress on the Domestic Abuse priority such as the development of the Kent Domestic Abuse website which signposted professionals and victims to appropriate services.

·         Funding for Independent Domestic Violence Advisors had been continued through a specific funding stream through the CSP using a Charity Cartel.  This had allowed continued use of this excellent resource.

·         Since 2013, there had been 13 Domestic Homicide Reviews in Kent.  The learning outcomes from these had continued to contribute toward developing better systems to preventing domestic homicides.

6.            Supt. Russell, Head of Partnerships and Communities for Kent Police, commented on the Community Safety Agreement Action Plan in that so far the Community Trigger had only been activated twice in Kent.  This evidenced that there was already a good system in place for responding to ASB complaints.

7.            Supt. Russell commented that as 20% of callers to the police were responsible for 50% of the total call volume, it was important to focus resources on the root causes of the ASB and implement preventative measures that would provide long term resolution to the repeat victims.

8.            Mr Bone-Knell, Operations Director of Kent Fire and Rescue Service (KFRS), provided some background on the work of the Kent Joint Community Safety Team.  He gave updates on various areas of Community Safety work such as;

·         The excellent  ...  view the full minutes text for item 74.