Boston and South Holland Newsletter - December 2022
Activity in Boston and South Holland
The main activity for myself and the rest of the Safer Together Team along with all staff from the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner this quarter has been the public consultation on Marc Jones’s Police and Crime Plan. This was the publics opportunity to inform the PCC of what is important to them, the areas where they have concerns and as a result allow him to plan accordingly.
In previous years Boston has consistently been difficult to consult with and last year returned the least number of consultations across the county. This year however I carried out two public engagement events in Boston market and one with students in the college, all three events I have to say ably supported by staff from the Neighbourhood Policing Team and in the case of the college from the Interns from our office as well. So, a big thanks to Insp Colin Clarkson and Sgt Kate Odlin for their staff’s support. In addition, the Community Safety Team from Boston Borough Council also played their part by internally promoting the survey. As a result, this year Boston came fourth out of seven districts on the number of surveys completed.
That is not of course to say South Holland were not as successful, with the number of consultations completed this year better than last year. A public consultation event I held in Spalding was productive and again supported by the Neighbourhood Policing Team. I need to say thank you to Insp Nick Waters and PCSO Sylwia Davy for all their addition efforts in pushing the consultation.
We do of course work as a team which means that not everything we do is confined to our individual areas. In October at the start of the consultation period Maisie McMahon, Safer Together Co-ordinator for North and South Kesteven, and I attended a National Farmers Union event in Dogdyke to promote the work of the OPCC. In November along with my colleague Stephanie Marwood, Safer Together Co-ordinator for Lincoln and West Lindsey, I attended the Domestic Violence Business conference in Lincoln. Full results of the consultation will be known in January 2023.
In October again with Stephanie, we were able to support the RoadHOG youth project by attending the launch of their expansion into Lincoln. This would provide youth activity in areas and at times where young people struggle to find something to do. Over the years the project has proved across Boston and South Holland that they make a real difference for young people and helps reduce anti-social behaviour in the areas they set up.
The rest of this quarter has been taken up with my usual commitments to the Armed Forces Covenant Board and Veterans Board, Boston and Spalding Community Alcohol Partnership, Priority Setting meetings with the NPT and a very interesting update on the Boston Town deal which I attended with Deputy PCC Phil Clark. The full team also attended Skegness Grammar School for a Lincolnshire Stronger Voices event which allowed all year’s groups to give feedback on how they feel about crime and safety.
StreetSafe
As part of the government’s agenda to tackle violence against women and girls, we are promoting an online tool called StreetSafe to enable everyone to report locations where they feel or have felt unsafe and to identify the features on why that location made them feel unsafe.
StreetSafe is a national initiative and has been developed in cooperation with the Home Office and the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC).
The focus of the initiative is to identify particular areas and factors that lead to people feeling unsafe and might help offenders either commit or conceal a crime – such as street lighting, abandoned buildings or poorly designed spaces, vandalism, as well as behaviours of individuals or groups of people.
StreetSafe is anonymous. There will be no questions about identity, such as name or date of birth. However, there are optional questions about crime reporting as well as age, sex, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, illnesses or disabilities. We are asking for this information because it helps us to have a better understanding of the concerns.
The tool captures:
• Location data (longitude and latitude) provided by Google Maps
• Answers to questions about the place that may cause people to feel unsafe
• Answers to questions about peoples’ behaviour that may cause respondents to feel unsafe
• Reasons for not reporting a crime
• Information about respondents characteristics (like age range and gender) but nothing that could identify them (like name or contact details)
StreetSafe be accessed via Lincs Police website StreetSafe page.
Lincolnshire Alert
Some examples of messages put out each week by the Safer Together Team:
- DVLA Scam
- Email and phone check
- Distraction burglary
- Burglary
- Police and Crime consultation
- Holiday Activity Clubs
- Energy rebate scams
If you need a message sent out via Lincs Alert then contact your local Safer Together Team Co-ordinator. Don’t forget we can target the message to a village, town or district. You can sign up to get Lincs Alert messages at: www.lincolnshirealert.co.uk
