Regular readers of this blog will be aware that I've long been critical of the approach taken by the Labour administration in Reading to reducing crime and anti-social behaviour at a neighbourhood level.
Officers involved in this area at RBC work hard but they are stymied by diktats from Labour nationally and lack of leadership locally.
Labour's approach to community safety has been heavily critcised in recent years and led many residents to stop reporting crime in their areas.
This is damaging as it means that many issues in the local area are not getting tackled simply because the authorities don't know about them.
I led a campaign on this issue last year after meeting many residents deeply frustrated by the lack of response to crime reports. We have made some progress but talking to officers recently it is still a major issue in parts of town including South Reading.
Little things don't help in Reading such as having more than one telephone number to report anti-social behaviour: one for the Police, one for the Council.
Crazy.
The Lib Dems in Reading have long been campaigning for a more joined-up approach from Thames Valley P olice and RBC and one which is more effective at reducing anti-social behaviour and listening to local people.
And it seems at long last the Labour administration of Reading Borough Council might have finally got the message, as we learn that a review of community safety has been launched.
This was launched out of the blue at a meeting of the Safer Reading Campaign on Monday evening.
This development follows the publication of damning statistics back in the Summer which showed that local people lack confidence in the Police and Council's ability to tackle crime in Reading.
And this was on top of news that a Home Office task-force was being sent to Reading which was identified as one of the worst places in the entire country for anti-social behaviour.
Some background.
The main mechanisms we have in Reading at the moment for dealing with local crime issues are Neighbourhood Action Groups (NAGs)and Safer Community Forums (SCFs).
The former is run by Thames Valley Police, the latter by Reading Borough Council.
There are currently 7 SCFs and 13 NAGs (covering 16 Neighbourhood Police areas).
One of the main problems I see when I attend meetings of the Forums and NAGs in my ward in my capacity as councillor is a lack of involvement of local people.
Often these meetings consist of a handful of councillors and officers discussing what they believe to be the key issues, rather than local people setting the agenda.
I have disagreed with RBC officers in the past who have argued that SCFs should not be public meetings (but should be invite only).
I Chair the South Reading Forum and it is disappointing how few members of the public attend our meetings.
I am very grateful to those residents who do attend -they are in the minority compared to most residents.
That said, I fully understand the reasons why local people don't come. It's most probably because they aren't aware of this group's existence.
If I wasn't a local councillor would I attend my local Forum?
Honest answer - probably not. It's not clear to residents what the objectives of these meetings are and why they should attend.
And, what's worse, is that I know for a fact there are areas of Reading where anti-social behaviour and crime is a real problem and local people are not able to get their voices heard by the Council and the Police.
However, given these Forums have around £80,000 pounds a year (in total) at their disposal to spend on community safety initiatives around Reading every year, the I think the lack of community involvement is a missed opportunity.
I wonder how many residents across Reading know they can bid for this money?
Councillors can submit bids on behalf of residents but I do not feel that enough residents are made aware by the Council that they can request funding for things like better streetlighting and alley-gating.
Also, how can residents and councillors be sure we are getting value for money for every pound of taxpayer's money that is being spent on these local crime-reduction projects?
When I was community safety spokesperson for the Lib Dems (between 2006-09) I was successful in getting officers to scrutinise spending on Safer Reading projects for the first time - to see if they made a difference and were value for money.
Not exactly rocket science. But very necessary.
As councillors in Redlands we have been very successful in recent years in getting funding for a range of projects to cut crime in the local area.
An independent inspection of RBC's Community Safety department in January 2008 found:
"The role of the Safer Reading Forums is not sufficiently clear in relation to other neighbourhood groups, and they are not representative of Reading's diverse and changing local communities."
And with the advent of Neighbourhood Action Groups which arrived in Reading a couple of years ago as a concept, I have detected further confusion in the local community about the roles and responsibilities of these different groups.
As I've said before this is not helped by the fact that Neighbourhood Policing Boundaries and Council ward boundaries are not coterminous.
How many of my neighbours know they are in the Newtown Neighbourhood?
Not many I would argue (given this area is not part of Newtown!) Redlands has been carved up into a number of Police Neighbourhoods none of which mean much at all to local residents.
My colleagues over in Katesgrove have made this point on numerous occasions.
My impressions were borne out by the Labour government's own statistics which showed very few people know who is in their local Police team.
A damning indictment of former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's vision of Neighbourhood Policing, I'd say.
The Audit Commission in its inspection picked up the same problems in its inspection report:
"There is confusion among stakeholders aboutthe roles of the seven Safer Reading Forums and the 12 Neighbourhood Action Groups. It is not clear to stakeholders which is open to all residents and which is by invitation. The issues which each group is intended to resolve are not clearly understood."
NAGs don't have a budget...but Safer Community Forums do. Safer Reading Forums have a publicity budget...NAGs don't and so on.
The fact that local residents didn't hear from NAGs (because they had no means of publicising their activities) lots of residents didn't come to meetings.
This is why I led a successful campaign last year to get the Council to offer financial support to NAGs which ended up with £50k funding coming out of this year's Council Budget. I heard recently that Police forces in other areas provide the cash.
Since then we have been disappointed at the time it has taken RBC and TVP to sort out how best to support NAGs to help them communicate with residents. Hopefully progress is now being made on this.
But it's not just about publcising the work of NAGs to get people to attend: once people are involved in meetings they need to feel they can influence local decision-making. The Police are trying hard to get this right but I don't think we are there yet.
Capacity is also a problem.
RBC officers have worked out there are 156 meetings of NAGs and Forums that they and TVP need to attend every year.
As councillors we struggle to get to all these meetings and you do wonder whether they are the best use of everyone's time.
It's also tough on residents who have busy lives too. There must be better ways of engaging local people.
So, those are some of the current problems we face in Reading at the moment.
These problems are clearly getting in the way of reducing crime and anti-social behaviour and more importantly building community confidence. Fear of crime is still to high in many parts of town.
My Lib Dem colleagues and I will be looking into the details of the community safety review with interest to see if what is planned will address some of the problems we have identified.
Details of the proposals outlined in the review are going to all the Safer Community Forums for discussion and it is likely that these plans will go through Council for a final decision early next year.
The review document is not currently up on the Council's website - I have emailed officers to point this out and will attach it on the Blog here when it is.
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