Seeking a Safer County

Reducing overall levels of crime across the County continues to be a high priority for the County Council and partner agencies involved in making Leicestershire a safer place in which to live.

We will continue to contribute to a range of crime reduction partnership arrangements to deliver on key community safety outcomes for people in Leicestershire. The key national community safety outcomes are:

We will contribute to these outcomes through the following:

In our own local PSA there are four crime related targets; reducing vehicle crime; working with problematic drug users; reducing domestic violence and improving the basic skills of young offenders. We have already made good progress towards our targets on these and, although achieving all of the domestic violence target is proving difficult, we are optimistic that the other targets can be achieved by the end of 2005/06. This will help make Leicestershire safer and bring in additional performance reward grants.

Led by the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Community Safety Programme Board and its PPO Strategy Steering Group, local implementation of this national strategy will focus on the relatively small number of prolific offenders who are responsible for a high proportion of crimes, most of which are drug-related, acquisitive crimes.

The Youth Offending Service will ensure that improved supervision is provided to those young people who are categorised as PPOs, as well as those who are at risk of becoming PPOs without extra intervention.

The roll out of Youth Inclusion and Support Panels (YISP) to each District Council area will help to identify children and young people not yet in the formal youth justice system but who are in need of early intervention if they are to be prevented from becoming PPOs in the future. These Panels will also have an important role, working with young people to reduce and prevent anti-social behaviour.

The County Council has allocated over £300,000 a year to enable the recruitment of more Police Community Support Officers. These officers will help provide community re-assurance through a visible police presence and will increase the capacity of the Police to respond to low level crime and anti-social behaviour.

Through the work of the Leicestershire Drug and Alcohol Action Team (DAAT), we aim to increase the number of problematic drug users accessing drug treatment services from 924 in 2004/05 to 1150 in 2005/06. The DAAT will continue to oversee the implementation of the Drug Intervention Programme, targeted at problematic drugs users who are involved in the criminal justice system. In Leicestershire this work focuses on through-care and after-care.

We will work to reduce waiting times for residential drugs treatment and specialist prescription services as well as helping providers increase the capacity of drug treatment services from1159 treatment places in 2004/05 to 1877 in 2005/06.

As well as contributing to the PPO Strategy above, the Youth Offending Service will work to prevent offending by children and young people overall and towards the achievement of national performance measures set by the Youth Justice Board and as set out in the Youth Justice Plan. Following a positive inspection in 2004, the Service will also implement its Inspection Action Plan.

Underpinned by the Basic Skills PSA project, we will continue to increase the proportion of young people in full time education, training and employment to achieve 85% in 2005/06. Other key areas the Service will focus on in 2005/06 include improved remand management, increased work with victims, additional parenting interventions and work to tackle drugs misuse.

Through work to stamp out illegal under age sales of alcohol, fireworks and butane gas lighter refills, trading standards will work with partners to help reduce anti social behaviour. The service will do likewise as regards doorstop sales to protect the vulnerable, particularly the elderly, from distraction burglary and the fear of crime.  As regards safety in the home, work will continue to ensure the safety of consumer goods including electric blankets. In partnership with social services and the fire and rescue service, guidance and information will be provided to the elderly and their carers to promote home safety.

The Government is bringing together the funding that comes into the County enabling partnerships to work together to reduce crime through new Local Area Agreement (LAA) arrangements. We will work with Leicestershire Together, the Community Safety Programme Board and local Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships during 2005/06 to agree priorities for the use of the new Safer and Stronger Communities Fund element of the LAA when it is introduced in 2006/07.