Northumbria: Audit of current community engagament activity
On coming into post, Adrian undertook a detailed audit of the current community engagement work undertaken by the police authority, the force and local authorities. This audit enabled the pilot to select which communities to focus its work upon.
Background
Geography
Northumbria is one of the largest police authorities in England by area. It is an area of distinct urban and rural contrasts: in the South of the region are the cities of Newcastle and Sunderland, which together with Gateshead and South and North Tyneside form the Tyne and Wear conurbation. Further North and West, population density and concentration disperses gradually through old coalfield villages into the smaller isolated farming communities that predominate in North Northumberland and Tynedale.
Within the rural areas, two distinct communities are apparent: the semi-rural coalfield communities, predominantly in Gateshead, North Tyneside, Wansbeck and Castle Morpeth; and the rural farming communities centred on market towns and villages in Alnwick, Berwick, and Tynedale.
Hard-to-reach groups in Northumbria
The definition of a hard-to-reach group is, for the purposes of this report, any population grouping of significant size that, because of a shared location, identity, interest or a pattern of societal discrimination/victimisation, is difficult for local authorities and service providers to engage with. Hard-to-reach groups often have a particular crime profile; for example, BME communities experience racist crime, LGB communities experience homophobic crime. Other groups are hard-to-reach because of the nature and impact of particular crimes, such as victims of domestic violence, rape or sexual abuse.
From an audit of census statistics and discussions with local authorities in Northumbria, the following broad groups emerge:
- Communities and individuals living in isolated rural communities (specifically rural coalfield village communities and dispersed farming communities)
- Black and minority ethnic communities (especially first-generation Muslim women)
- Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities
- Traveller communities
- Geographical communities experiencing characteristics of multiple deprivation
- Victims of sexual and domestic violence
- Young people - especially disaffected youth
- People with disabilities - both physical (including blind people and deaf people) and mental (including people with learning difficulties).
Northumbria Police Authority
Consultation activities
Northumbria Police Authority undertakes formal qualitative consultation to inform the development of annual and three-year policing priorities. In addition, more focused qualitative and qualitative consultation occurs in relation to quality of service and best value performance reviews of the policing service. Further engagement with hard to reach groups is seen as a priority and significant work has been undertaken with young people.
Annual and three-year policing plans are distributed to all households in Northumbria. Follow-up of individual issues identified in consultation is carried out by both the authority and force. Police and Community Forums are held three times a year at different locations within basic command unit areas. Opportunities exist to engage locally around local issues.
Challenges
The challenge identified by the audit is to ensure these issues can be collated and used to inform strategic decision making by members and officers of the authority, and that these outcomes are fed back to local communities.
Northumbria Police Force
Adrian drew on force data and interview material for this part of the audit.
Northumbria Police Force is made up of 6 Policing command units - Newcastle, Sunderland, Northumberland, South Tyneside, North Tyneside and Gateshead.
Consultation activities
The focus at the strategic level is on stakeholder and partner engagement, and there is considerable evidence of work with partner organisations in developing force strategies across a range of policing issues and priorities. While there is no direct community engagement at this level, these partners also provide links to the grassroots and local communities.
It is at local geographic level that direct community engagement occurs. This local engagement is very much linked to direct policing operations and services, and developed through interfaces such as neighbourhood watches, residents meetings, ward and parish meetings and Police and Community Area Forums.
The community safety department plays a key role in engaging excluded and hard-to-reach communities, and has a number of strategies and practices in place to facilitate engagement. At a command unit level, there is engagement of specific hard-to-reach communities or on specific issues, but this is not systematic.
Challenges
Engagement practice is not standardised or formalised across the force, and little evaluation work has been undertaken. Numerous ad hoc examples exist of innovative and creative practices involving these teams with the community. Further work drawing together and formalising these valuable ad hoc and varied procedures would be useful to inform future practices and models.
Local authorities
Adrian interviewed local authority officers responsible for consultation and engagement policy, crime and disorder reduction partnerships, local strategic partnerships and regeneration, so as to identify current and planned community engagement practice and structure.
Consultation activities
Consultation strategy
The development of consultation strategy has become a theme of corporate development across local authorities in Northumbria. All major single-tier authorities have developed strategies. At district level, consultation strategies are beginning to emerge. Northumberland County Council has invested significantly in community consultation and engagement, and embedded a strategy at the heart of the authority, to focus the authority around the citizen and customer.
Community engagement is becoming an increasingly important feature of corporate development across authorities in Northumberland. The development of a comprehensive engagement strategy is closely linked to the drive by authorities to improve services and customer focus. This is clearly seen in Northumberland County Council.
At a more local level, many authorities see engagement as vital for developing relevant and sustainable regeneration and area plans. A number of authorities have developed mechanisms to ensure that broad regeneration strategies are based on locally identified priorities. This process is very much dependent on community development resources and expertise.
In Newcastle, initiatives undertaken by Community Action on Health in association with the Health Authority, such as the annual Community Health Conferences, have led to focused involvement; this is one example of community engagement at the strategic level.
Methods and tools
Approaches and methods of consultation do not vary significantly across the authorities surveyed. Standard written, telephone, sampled and random surveys predominate, with Mori being the main external supplier. A number of authorities refer to 'citizen panels' for more focused qualitative and service-based consultation. In a similar way authorities may refer to supported youth parliaments or forums and BME, LGBT and disability forums when seeking the views of these hard-to-reach groups. Both Gateshead and Northumberland County Council have developed toolkits for consultation and engagement.
Participatory appraisal techniques have been used in South Shields and Newcastle to help inform regeneration and area based planning initiatives.
In Blyth and Castle Morpeth, external consultants have been used to facilitate community engagement in area regeneration plans. In Castle Morpeth, the Simalto approach was deployed to develop their area regeneration strategy; in Blyth, local people have been trained in participatory research techniques to engage local people in the Croft Ward neighbourhood planning area.
Challenges
While local engagement in area and neighbourhood planning is evidenced across Northumbria, engagement of the community at the strategic level is less evident. This perhaps reflects the difficulties of strategic involvement and the potential for tokenistic practices.
Understanding of engagement varies within and across authorities. It is important to develop an agreed understanding of what engagement is, why it is important and what it can achieve.
Conclusion
Both the police force and police authority engage with the community and have a community interface. The force engages more directly and locally as the service deliverer, the authority more strategically and regionally through consultation in order to scrutinise, monitor performance and hold the service to account.
Both organisations aim to ensure that local communities have excellent local policing services. However, each organisation has separate management and organisational arrangements and differential access to resources. In the context of the Home Office engagement pilot, the force and authority need to develop a jointly owned and resourced approach that can enhance the strategic functions of the authority and also help improve direct policing to communities.
Further information
Please contact Adrian Cantle-Jones: AdrianCantleJones@Gateshead.Gov.UK, telephone 0191 433 2809
