Agenda and minutes

There were no apologies received at the meeting.

There were no declarations of interest made at the meeting.

To approve the Minutes of the Community Safety Partnership Working Party meeting held on 12 December 2016, copy attached.

Councillor Campbell proposed, Councillor M. Saunders seconded and Members agreed the minutes as a correct record of the meeting held on 12 December 2016.

Matters arising from the minutes

Councillor Campbell advised the meeting that with regards to the recommendations in the previous minutes referred to above, Ramsgate Town Council had agreed to set aside circa £10,000 to fund for one year, the counselling services to be provided by EK Rape Crisis Centre. If other councils needed to their residents to access the serviced, they would be required to contribute to funding the service. It was hoped that this service could start as early as April 2017.

In the same vein, Penny Button, Head of Safer Neighbourhoods advised Members that the Kent Police & Crime Commissioner had budgeted £500,000 for a victims specialist service to which councils could apply for funding of community safety initiatives like the provision of the counselling services to local residents in need.

The closing deadline for submission of the applications was 03 March 2017 and although the Panel were to forward the working party recommendations highlighted in the minutes, Cabinet would be meeting on 09 March and that would be too late to thereafter make an application to the fund. Officers advised that the Leader and Deputy Leader could expedite the decision to submit an application in order to meet the deadline.

Councillor Falcon informed the meeting that she had been in touch with Jane Skeets (EK Rape Crisis Centre representative) and advised on the Ramsgate Town Council decision.

Councillor Curran, Chairman of the working party also provided the update to the meeting that Police Community Officers (PCOs) were now wearing body cameras while on duty as promised by Chief Inspector Sharon Adley.

Jessica Bailey, Community Safety Team Leader led the first half of the joint power-point presentation and introduced the subject for debate. She explained the various definitions for key terms of the new anti-social behaviour legislation. The new legislation came into force in October 2014 and provided some statistics on current performance regarding anti-social behaviour incidents in Thanet between October 2014 and December 2016, which are highlighted in the power-point document attached as Annex 1 to this minute item.

Ms Bailey said that the Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) incidents had gone down in Thanet. Other councils have also reported a similar trend. Benchmarking against other councils, Thanet appears to be doing well. She further made the following points:

·  There had been 5 applications made since October 2014 under the Community Trigger and 1 met the threshold and 3 recommendations were made;

·  Civil Injunctions were introduced in February 2015;

·  Under new legislation (civil injunctions), positive orders can be made to support individuals who had problems with substance misuse;

·  Community Protection Orders can be issued by council officers or the police;

·  If a CPO was breached, a Community Protection Notice (CPN) would then be issued;

·  59 CPOs issued to date that relate to neighbour disputes, illegal encampment, street drinking, absence of tenancy management, fly-tipping, rubbish contraventions;

·  There has been a 90% compliance to these orders, which is quite positive;

·  Only 6 cases progressed to full notices.

Trevor Kennett, Interim Head of Operational Services gave the other half of the presentation and focused on enforcement actions for rubbish contraventions and street enforcement. He made the following comments:

·  Officers were using the new powers creatively to overcome historic problems that Council has been trying to address for some time;

·  Council was continuing to work with businesses;

·  Police had made 2 premises closure applications that for a period of 3 months over the last 6 months;

·  Police were no longer required to consult before issuing Police Dispersal Orders;

·  To date 76 dispersals orders had been issued since the new legislation came into force;

·  Stakeholders with a vested interest can request for a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSP). These orders can only be issued by councils and the Police can assist with the enforcement. Dog fouling, Dog Control Orders and Designated Public Places Order come into this category.

Next Steps

There were some transitional challenges that need to be addressed. Council would have to embrace multi agency working approach in order to avoid duplicating work across agencies. Council had been given three years to introduce the PSP orders.

TDC was currently working on that setting up the system for enforcing these orders. Members were advised that there will be a district wide ban on dog fouling and that most districts had pout such bans in place. One way of ensuring the effective monitoring of this ban is to introduce mandatory micro-chipping for dogs. Boston Borough Council had introduced micro-chipping and Dover District Council had introduced a district wide dog fouling ban.

In response to the presentation Members made  ...  view the full minutes text for item 13.