Appendix B: Neighbourhood Policing

The purpose of Neighbourhood Policing is to deliver the right people, at the right places and in the right numbers, in order to create neighbourhoods that are safe and feel safe. The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) leads the Neighbourhood Policing Programme. The programme was established to support the achievement of dedicated Neighbourhood Teams in all areas of England and Wales by 2008 and the target of 16,000 Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) by April 2007.

Neighbourhood Policing aims to provide communities with:

Access – to policing or community safety services through a named point of contact.
Inﬂuence – over community safety priorities in their neighbourhood.
Interventions – joint action with communities and partners to solve problems.
Answers – sustainable solutions to problems and feedback on results.

Whilst ‘neighbourhood’ generally describes a geographic area, there is no universal definition shared by all community safety partners. Communities themselves also have widely differing views of what constitutes their neighbourhood. For the purposes of neighbourhood policing, a neighbourhood is defined through local agreement between communities, local authorities, police and partner organisations.

As each Neighbourhood Team is dedicated to a locally agreed geographic area, the size and composition will vary according to local need and resources. There is not a ‘one size fits all’ model to neighbourhood policing and partnerships will need to take into account the differing local circumstances that may exist across a partnership area.

In operational terms neighbourhood policing can be understood as:

An organisational strategy that allows the police, its partners and the public to work closely together to solve problems of crime and disorder, and improve neighbourhood conditions and feelings of security.
A mainstream policing activity and integrated with other policing services.
Requiring evidence based deployment of neighbourhood teams against identiﬁed need.
Establishes dedicated, identiﬁable, accessible, knowledgeable and responsive neighbourhood policing teams which provide all citizens with a named point of access.
Reﬂects local conditions and is ﬂexible, responsive and adaptable.
Allows the police service to work directly with the local community to identify the problems that are most important to them, thereby giving people direct inﬂuence over local policing priorities.
Establishes a regime for engaging other agencies and the public in problem solving mechanisms.
Uses the National Intelligence Model as the basis for deployment.
Requires an effective engagement, communication and feedback strategy, and a clear explanation of where accountability lies.
Should be subject to rigorous performance management including clear performance monitoring against a local plan and commitments made to neighbourhoods.

Police and partners need to work with communities not only to make neighbourhoods free from crime and disorder, but also to make people feel safe in them. However, community safety is not just a policing issue. Community safety issues can significantly inﬂuence the public’s perception of the quality of public service provision for example, dealing with abandoned vehicles, graffiti, or tackling nuisance neighbours can have a huge impact on the way the public judge the quality of public services. Working with communities to identify and resolve the problems that have the greatest impact on them can bring significant improvements to the sense of community wellbeing and the perception of the quality of local services.

Not all crime is local. There are links between national and international threats and events and the impact that these can have on local communities, for example, people trafficking, prostitution, terrorism and serious and organised crime. Appropriate delivery structures and processes should be in place at all levels of delivery within the police and partner agencies to ensure that there is sufficient capacity to impact upon these broader issues effectively.

The National Reassurance Policing Programme (NRPP) introduced a form of Neighbourhood Policing across 16 sites in England between 2003 – 2005. The programme involved local communities in identifying crime and disorder issues in their neighbourhoods, which they then tackled together with the police and other public service providers and partners.

The evaluation of the NRPP (published in January 2006) found the results of the programme to be consistently positive. The evidence showed that improvements in key outcomes such as levels of crime, perceptions of anti-social behaviour, and feelings of safety after dark and public confidence in the police were directly attributable to the NRPP approach. The programme also delivered significant improvements in trust amongst communities themselves.

When properly implemented, Neighbourhood Policing works to cut crime and anti-social behaviour and to increase public confidence. The three critical elements were found to be:

The presence of visible, accessible and locally known authority ﬁgures in neighbourhoods, in particular police ofﬁcers and PCSOs.
Community involvement in the process of identifying priorities and taking action to deal with them.
Targeted policing activity and problem solving to tackle crimes and disorder that matter most to local people.

Communities notice the difference when the police work directly on the problems prioritised by local people. Involving individuals and communities in collaborative problem solving together with police and partners has a significant impact on perceptions of safety.

Evidence shows that communities want local Neighbourhood Policing to tackle the issues that matter most to them. Community engagement, which lies at the heart of the approach, brings highly localised problems to the attention of the police. Neighbourhood Policing enables communities to determine the priorities for action. When Neighbourhood Teams tackle these in partnership with communities and other local services neighbourhoods feel safer and are safer for those living and working in them.