Regular readers of this blog will know that I have led a campaign in Reading for a better Police and Council response to anti-social behaviour reports.
One of the issues I have raised is problems some local people have had when reporting crime concerns via the Police's anti-social behaviour hotline.
This evening I joined members of the Safer Reading Campaign on a visit to one of Thames Valley Police's Public Enquiry Centres (PEC) in Kidlington, Oxfordshire. It was really good to have a number of members of the public and members of Neighbourhood Action Groups with us.
I was partly responsible for the visit being organised as I had led questioning of Thames Valley Police on the subject of the Police anti-social behaviour hotline at a meeting of the Safer Reading Campaign last year.
None of the three Labour councillors on the Campaign joined us on the visit, which was disappointing.
The fact that Cllr Bet Tickner, Labour's Lead Member Communities and Neighbourhoods, did not attend sent out a very negative message about the Labour administration's commitment to improving community safety, in my view.
I found the visit highly informative. First of all we had a question and answer session with Chief Superintendent Liam Macdougall about the the operation of the PEC and how it linked with Neighbourhood Policing etc
We heard that around 2.2 million calls are received by the PEC each year and about 90% callers are satisfied by the service they received last year.
I asked about how the Police call centre and Reading Borough Council shared crime data reported by the public (reply: it's improving), the new all crime attendance policy, and the need to improve the way calls were handled to encourage people to report crimes.
A local NAG chair complained that it had taken weeks to get a follow up call from the local Police team - it seems because they were all on leave at the same time over Christmas.
I raised the problem involving some of my constituents last year who found that when they reported mini motos around Hexham Road to the Police the Council claimed there was no problem, because they had no record of any phonecalls.
According to one of the Council officers present at tonight's meeting this was because the Council requested crime date not incident data.
I hope they sort this out as it was very demotivating to residents at the time when they thought their calls had not been logged. I was reassured that this has since been changed.
We learned from Police officers this evening that every single call is recorded so the likelihood of reports not being logged is unlikely - the problem is more likely to be at a local level.
I was interested to learn that once calls were received by the PEC in Kidlington, the duty to follow up calls fell to Berkshire Command Units (BCU) i.e. Berkshire West in the case of Reading. This explains why some calls get followed up and some don't - not ideal.
The Police response to our questions was positive and I was impressed by the Chief Super giving up half an hour of his time on a Thursday evening to listen to our concerns.
After the talk we were shown into the area where calls from across the Thames Valley are received (the other call centres are in Abingdon and Milton Keynes). We watched as call operators had to juggle two computer screens and speak to members of the public whilst getting messages to Police officers and response teams - real multi-tasking!
People answering the phone have about 3 minutes to get vital information from callers, as well as assessing which calls are urgent, who might be at risk etc. I think everyone on the visit had a lot of respect for the people who had to make those sort of snap decisions about callers and situations.
We heard how call operators are trained to deal with among other things "silent calls". They could be hoax callers or they could be from people suffering domestic violence. A very difficult call.
Chief Superintendent Macdougall finished by discussing the future of crime reporting, which includes texting and utilising the much-improved Thames Valley Police website.
We left at about 8.30pm feeling a lot clearer about the operation of the call centre, and in my case with a much better insight into some of the problems faced by the Police in handling calls from the public.
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