Agenda item

The Chairman invited representatives from the Kent Surrey & Sussex Community Rehabilitation Company (KSSCRC) to make their presentation. During that presentation, Donna Leigh, Community Payback Operations Manager (East Kent) and Ian Craig, Community Payback Officer made the following key points:

·  Community orders or suspended prison orders were set out for a range of 40 to 300 hours of work, during which an individual would learn new skills and improve their job prospects;

·  Last year, 365,000 community working hours were completed in Kent, Surrey and Sussex and this translated to about £2,742milion in paid work equivalent;

·  The programme helped change the pattern of behaviour for individuals who were enrolled onto it. This also helped increase the self-worth of individuals;

·  Work activities included gardening, decorating and renovation works on buildings. This would offer a good amount of work to keep the individuals occupied. An individual could use 20% of those hours training to gain a formal qualification;

·  Community work included work placements in charity shops. However this was usually assigned to older (more mature) individuals who did not require as much supervision as the younger individuals on the programme;

·  Placements were done after risk assessment would have been carried out with the participating organisations and those organisations are usually requested to provide the commercial tools/equipment to be used to carry out these work pieces.

In response to the presentation Members asked questions and made comments as follows:

·  How many community payback projects were taking place in Thanet?

·  How can organisations present their requests for community payback placements?

·  Where do individuals (offenders) who are place on community orders come from?

·  How are community payback projects publicised?

·  In view of the current cutbacks, does this programme have enough supervisors?

·  Could organisations provide their own supervisor if individuals are on the programme were given work placements?

·  How many projects have been done in Thanet?

·  How was the community payback programme funded?

Responding to Member queries, Ms Leigh and Mr Craig made the following comments:

·  Multiple projects had been undertaken in the district. These included work with Mancap, clearing alleyways, recycling at the Manston depot, RSPCA Centre, graffiti removal and work at the Pierremont Park railings and beach cleaning (e.g. cleaned the Minis Bay beach on Sunday 05 March);

·  The challenge for project is collection of waste generated by the work activities as this adds up to the costs of the project. There is a need for closer liaison with TDC and TDC particularly with regards to clearing of waste from clearing of alleyways;

·  All requests were assessed to determine their value to the community and the costs that would be incurred by KSSCRC before they were either accepted or declined;

·  Nominations for projects to be considered for community payback projects can be submitted via an online application on the KSSCRC website;

·  The programme had cleared 150 alleyways in the district;

·  95% of individuals who work on placements in the district come from Thanet. However there were occasions when individuals would go to a neighbouring district (like Sittingbourne) because of the nature of the shift work pattern when such shift pattern was not available in Thanet;

·  KSSCRC produced press releases to publicise community payback work and individuals who work on these projects wear high visibility jackets and vehicles have logos;

·  Requests for work placements under this programme had to ensure that they workload was enough to cover a minimum period of three months to make it viable for the project;

·  About 180 community payback work projects have been completed in Thanet. The workload was seasonal as demand increased during summer;

·  CRC had a seven year contract (now gone three years of that contract) that was paid for by the Ministry of Justice and was based on targets which included reduction in re-offending and work completion within seven days.

Members thanked the Ms Leigh and Mr Craig for the presentation and they also thanked the KSSCRC for the work done in the district. They also requested contact details for submitting work placements requests.

There being no further issues to consider, Members noted the report.