Ah, year end; that mythical time when finance people get shirty, business plans get spewed out, and everyone desperately waits to see how much budget they’ll be allocated for the next FY. Or maybe that’s just us.
We’ve spent March trying to avoid the admin hell of year end, and focusing both on providing our usual country-trotting service with organising some exciting plans for the next FY. It looks like most of our focus will be (unsurprisingly) on PCCs, but of course we’re always available to help partnerships with any issue we can.
The month started with us catching up with the tail end of the Home Office PCC roadshows – I went along to Manchester and Adam to Newcastle. We found these really useful as a means of gauging the preparedness of partnerships for PCC – how did you find them? We are looking at hosting a joint “wash up” event in partnership with the Home Office in the next few months to capture some of the learning from these events and answer any FAQs.
Our Police and Crime Panel Knowledge Hub has gone from strength to strength and now has representation from each force area. We’re working hard with host authorities to establish Panels in each area before the July deadline, and have recently published the latest in our ever-increasing number of PCC guides, our Rules of Procedure document – download it here.
We’ve been working hard on ensuring all relevant organisations are clued up on the latest on PCC, and I visited New Forest DC and the Core Cities Community Safety Group to discuss; Mark presented to the District Councils Network, NOMS, the Association of Police Authorities and a representation from the City of Copenhagen, who were visiting the City of London and were keen to learn more about community safety and partnership working.
Vicki’s been working (when not snorkelling in Malta!) on domestic abuse and multiple needs issues, including attending a meeting of Revolving Doors’ SPARK project, responding to the Home Office’s “definition of DV” consultation, encouraging applications from CSPs for DV partnership support from Standing Together against Domestic Violence, and tidying up all previous DVHR threads on the KHub into this one to help inform a forthcoming Home Office review.
The final decisions have been made about 29 of the 30 areas which will receive funding from the Home Office’s Ending Gangs and Serious Youth Violence programme. We’ve been working on accrediting Home Office peers through our two-day accreditation centre at Bramshill to help staff the peer reviews of these areas, and I popped up to Liverpool to help with the preparations for one of the first reviews next month. We’ve also been participating in the Expert Panel (me), the Home Office Project Board (Mark) and the Inter-Ministerial Group (Helen).
Mark has also been involved with the group the Home Office have set up to develop the code of practice for operating public space CCTV systems that the Protection of Freedoms Bill will introduce, and working on what a new licensing regime for scrap metal dealers might look like as a way of reducing metal theft.
Finally we had a brilliant couple of days in Manchester running an accreditation centre for ten new Community Safety Peer Reviewers, with another session coming up in Birmingham later this month. Our peers work on peer reviews, desktop reviews, mentoring and assisting partnerships with various pieces of work. Contact us if you’d like some peer support of your own!
