Agenda item

Question time with the Cabinet Member for Safer Croydon and Communities, Councillor Hamida Ali.

The Committee is asked to consider whether it wishes to make any recommendations following the discussion of this item.

The Committee received a report set out on pages 17 to 38 of the agenda along with an accompanying presentation on the Portfolio of the Cabinet Member for Safer Croydon and Communities, Councillor Hamida Ali. During the introductory presentation to this item the following was noted

i.      Although the Portfolio did not have as large a budget as some of the others, a wide range of areas were covered including community safety work streams and working with the voluntary & community sector.

ii.     The strengths within the Portfolio included the breath of activity arising from partnership work, Croydon Trading Standards playing a role nationally in test purchasing the online acquisition of knives, the Drive project aimed at disrupting domestic and sexual violence, funding had been received from National FGM Centre for a social worker for two years, the Voluntary & Community Sector Strategy and the Council had received recognition for its equalities and diversity work from both Stonewall & the Employers Network for Equalities & Inclusion.

iii.    Weaknesses included the lack of available funding undermining the ambitions of the Council and the lack of available, affordable community space (although provision was being created in the former SLaM premises on Tamworth Road).

iv.   Future opportunities included the expansion of the Credit Union, CCTV investment for smart city applications, the Best Bar None competition planned for 2019/20 and the second phase of Community Empowerment and Devolution also planned for 2019/20.

v.    Potential threats included the impact from the restructure of the Police Basic Command Unit, the large volume of activity across multiple funding streams outside of the Safer Croydon Partnership structure and data protection issues that restricted the sharing of data.

Following the presentation from the Cabinet Member, the Committee was given the opportunity to ask questions about her Portfolio. The first question concerned the potential impact of the Police restructure to a tri-borough arrangement with Sutton and Bromley. The South Area Commander for the Metropolitan Police advised that the purpose of the restructure was to ensure that there was more officers available on the ground and in moving to a tri-borough arrangement it delivered savings from having less senior management to deliver this. It had also presented the opportunity to equalise the work of senior commanders, so there should not be a noticeable difference on a local level.

It was questioned whether all the various partnerships and boards could lead to a risk of duplication, affecting the outcomes. It was advised that the Boards under the Safer Croydon Partnership were arranged to reflect the priorities of the Partnership. The arrangement had recently been reviewed and it was concluded that the partnership was working well, but it would be reviewed again in 2020. Within the Cabinet Member’s own Portfolio, there were regular meetings with the three Executive Directors to ensure that there was cohesion across the Portfolio.

The provision of funding for a social worker to work specifically on cases of FGM was welcomed by the Committee, with it questioned when this role would be in place. It was advised that the funding was due to start in April 2019, with recruitment for this role due to start. Furthermore, there would be additional FGM training for existing staff as well.

It was highlighted that modern CCTV equipment was now cheaper and more powerful, but there were issues with increasing its coverage in public areas. As such it was questioned what the Council could do to lobby central Government to achieve better outcomes.  It was advised that there was a need to achieve a balance between safety and privacy and in doing so resident expectations also needed to be managed. CCTV was not particularly good at preventing violent crime, but it was useful for the crime detection especially in youth crimes when witnesses were often reluctant to come forward. It was highlighted that at present the Council provided 24 hour monitoring of its CCTV, which was not something that all boroughs offered. The new equipment would offer facial recognition capacity, but there were strict regulations guiding its use.

It was highlighted that there were areas of social infrastructure, such as libraries, that were not open in the evening and at weekends when they would be useful locations for young people to visit. As such it was questioned whether there were any plans to look at social infrastructure as part of the wider crime prevention work within the Cabinet Member’s Portfolio.  It was confirmed that it the Administration had given a Manifesto Commitment to working with schools to increase the amount of community space available, but there were issues around who controlled these assets. It was positive that the Council had been able to retain its libraries across the borough. Work was needed to continue the roll out of the safe haven scheme across the borough.

Conclusions

Following the discussion of this item, the Committee concluded that there was concern about the number of Working Groups operating under the Cabinet Member’s Portfolio and the possibility of duplication and as such agreed that this may need to be scrutinised in greater detail at a later date.