Agenda and minutes

To approve as correct the minutes of the meetings held on 29 July 2016 and authorise the Chairman to sign them.

The minutes of the meeting of the Sub-Committee held on 28 July 2016 were agreed and signed by the Chairman.

The Sub-Committee welcomed Douglas Charlton (DC), Head of Stakeholders and Partnerships North London Rehabilitation Directorate.

The Sub-Committee were advised that DC was responsible for 16 North London boroughs as well as the lead on IOM.

MTCNovo who had won the contract to deliver probation services for low to medium risk clients had introduced a new cohort model, however this had not been well received by partners and a review had taken place. Following the review the bulk of the service would revert to the previous geographical model, although some cohorts would remain at strategic level.

Details of the changes would be sent to the Havering Community Safety Partnership next week.

Members had questions around the Community Payback service which was well used and appreciated by schools, voluntary groups, streetcare, housing and parks. Arrangements would not be changed following the review.

A quarterly report on the work of the Community Payback Team was submitted to the Safer Neighbourhood Board.

The Sub-Committee noted the report.

The Sub-Committee welcomed the Local Borough Commander, Martin Corbett (MC) to the meeting.

MC informed the Sub-Committee of the latest performance indicators for the brigade.

The area of main concern for the brigade was deliberate fires. In the last quarter there had been 88 incidents against a target of 51, 27 in July, 32 in August and 29 in September. The Fire Brigade would be looking to do something different next year to reduce these figures; this would include joint working with the police tasking group to help identify possible hotspots. Other options included increased use of the cycle patrols, starting them earlier in the year to identify possible trouble spots and undertaking more visual audits.

The quarter had seen a reduction in accidental dwelling fires after a high of 36 in quarter 1. There had been 12 incidents in quarter 2, with 10 occurring in July.

Fire related injuries were well within target with just 3 in the first 6 months of the year. All other indicators were within target.

The Fire Brigade also undertook some innovative youth engagement work.

·         The LIFE programme was now funded centrally and was continuing. The programme was aimed at 13/18 year olds who were referred by YOT, NEET etc. and was targeted at those who were likely to respond.

·         Each course had between 12/16 participants and included fun elements as well as a disciplinary element.

·         A second element was the cadet scheme which involved a 6 month course with a BTEC available at the end. Cadets attended college once a week. For the future the brigade were looking at doing some joint work with the police cadets.

·         A third programme was the SAFE DRIVE STAY ALIVE course which was aimed at year 11 students and was extremely hard hitting. This performance would be held at the Queen’s Theatre on the 9^th and 10^th November with one performance in the morning and one in the afternoon each day.

·         The Fire Brigade attend the Junior Citizens Scheme which is coordinated by Community Safety and involves the police as well. There had also been 2 open days to celebrate the 150^th anniversary of the London Fire Brigade. These had proved so successful the Borough Commander would be looking to run the open days as annual events.

The Borough Commander advised the Sub-Committee that the draft of LFP 6 would be available by the end of November for consultation. One of the issues to be addressed in the Plan was whether the Fire Brigade should just react to problems like the floods in Havering or should they be more proactive and undertake prevention work.  

Officers advised the Sub-Committee that the Emergency Planning Team were driving a piece of work looking at how the Council and partners could become involved in preventative work.

The Borough Commander advised that the brigade were looking to work more collaboratively with both the police and Ambulance Service. Across London the Fire Brigade were looking at their property portfolio to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 11.

An oral report will be given.

Officers advised the Sub-Committee had met on two occasions. The second meeting had been provided with details of the legal powers available to the Council to deal with illegal incursions.  The police would be invited to the next meeting to discuss their strategic role and their response to illegal incursions.

The Sub-Committee asked the Borough Commander whether there had been any issues on Halloween Night. He advised the Sub-Committee that he had not had an opportunity to collate the data yet but there had been a significant amount of ASB, but he had sufficient officers to deal with any issues.

The weekend had been busy and the numbers on Sunday were greater than expected, although greater numbers were available on the emergency response, SNT and town centre teams.

The Sub-Committee commented on the possible merger of Havering, Barking & Dagenham and Redbridge police forces. Officers advised that the Leader of the Council would be making an announcement at next week’s Council meeting.

The Borough Commander highlighted a number of positives if the merger went ahead:

·         Resources would be available for migration between the three forces a bonus for Havering and its night time economy;

·         It would allow a better co-ordinated approach to tackling illegal incursions by travellers;

·         The SNT teams would be ring-fenced.

The Sub-Committee noted the reports.

The Sub-Committee were advised that in January 2016 the Commissioner had announced that as part of his commitment to keeping London safe and to meet the threat of determined and deadly armed attackers the Met would grow the number of armed officers by 600.

At the beginning of August the Met started Operation Hercules, this visibly deployed more armed officers on proactive operations and targeted patrols, both in vehicles and on foot at locations around London.

A member of the Sub-Committee commented that this was the first stage towards the militarisation of the Police and there was the possibility of some accidental shootings. The Borough Commander responded that the armed police were exceptionally well trained to do a specific job. If an officer failed any part of the training they were not accepted as an armed officer.

Other members of the Sub-Committee supported the decision pointing out that the number of armed officers was still lower than they were 10 years ago and there were less than 10 discharges of a fire arm in a year.

The majority of police officers 92% were not armed.

This report had been submitted with the agreement of the Chair as an urgent matter pursuant to Section 100B(4) of the Local Government Act 1972.

3 indicators under the SAFE goal fell under the remit of the Crime and Disorder Sub-Committee. Of these two were red flagged and one was green flagged.

One indicator was for Total Notifiable Offences, which was being monitored. It was unlikely that we would see any reductions due to significant changes made in how the data was recorded embedded over the previous several months. This was largely down to changes in the recording of violent crimes, which accounted for a third of all crimes reported.

The significant increases in victims being identified, now through multiple agencies were leading to more demand for preventative actions and interventions through the MARAC and commissioned services.

The second indicator related to the number of anti-social behaviour incidents. The total number of ASB reports to date was 3,488, an increase of 30.3% compared to the previous corresponding period. The London-wide increase was 11.8%.

There were three specific problems which were having an adverse effect on performance, notably the appearance of traveller sites. There had been in excess of 500 calls generated by the arrival of travellers and caravans at 9 locations throughout Havering. This represented 15% of all ASB incidents. Another persistent problem complained of repeatedly, although much lower in volume, is vehicle nuisance and drifting around the Business Improvement District, Rainham, which had received 65 ASB calls during the financial year.

Finally one particular caller had generated 99 calls to police regarding ASB. The complainant suffered from dementia, and their deteriorating health contributed to them reporting ASB which they had delusions of.

The green rated indicator related to Repeat Domestic Violence cases going to the MARAC. Havering was currently under resourced in terms of Independent Domestic Violence Advocates who manged MARAC cases, with 2 FTE currently unavailable. Issues with the Victim Support IDVA service, managed and commissioned by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, had been raised at the highest levels by Havering and numerous other Community Safety Partnerships across London, who were suffering similar problems. This was expected to be resolved fully by November.

The Sub-Committee noted the report.

This report had been submitted with the agreement of the Chair as an urgent matter pursuant to Section 100B(4) of the Local Government Act 1972.

In the absence of the Head of Barking & Dagenham, Havering and Newham National Probation Service a written report had been circulated to Members.

The key points in the report were:

Following the reorganisation the national Probation Service became responsible for the following categories:

·         Assessed to pose a High or Very High risk of serious harm to others;

·         All MAPPA eligible offenders;

·         All Foreign National offenders.

NPS managed approximately 320 Havering offenders. Havering was a joint Local Delivery Unit with Barking and Dagenham and a total of 800 offenders were dealt with onsite in Romford). Approximately 60% of the workload were custody cases and 40% either being supervised on post release Licence or as part of a Community Order.

NPS would shortly start purchasing services from providers on a case by case basis. This would expand the range of interventions available to offenders during their period of supervision in custody and the community. Existing interventions included:

·         Full access to CRC delivered accredited programmes;

·         Delivery of internal Community Sex Offender Group Programme;

·         Personality Disorder specialist (seconded Probation Officer who worked alongside psychologists) and link into specialist services for this group of offenders;

·         Victim Liaison Service;

·         An internal Housing Advice Worker (HAWK);

·         An Employment, Training and Education advisor;

·         Access to European Social Fund programme;

·         Link to NPS Serious Case Advisory Unit to access specialist interventions for those offenders with gang affiliations and TACT related convictions.

The Sub-Committee noted the report.