Introduction
Intelligence-led or evidence-led decision making means understanding what needs to be done and how to do it. Intelligence- led decision making lies at the heart of effective delivery. Every partnership works within a defined budget and, with a full range of community safety issues to address, must prioritise their efforts to reduce crime and disorder. In this context, routine strategic analysis of all the available information is important when identifying the most pressing priorities, based on the most important risks to community safety. We want every partnership to pursue an intelligence-led, problem-solving and outcome orientated approach to community safety.
Effective partnership planning will be heavily dependent on the quality of the analysis that takes place. This is in turn reliant on effective and timely information sharing between partners. In addition, it is important to have a good understanding of the needs and concerns of your local community and to explore lessons learned from previous projects and interventions. Analysis of all this information allows partnerships to set strategic priorities, plan for delivery, allocate resources and deliver real benefits to their communities. In two-tier areas, it is important that this information is co-ordinated at county level to deliver economies of scale.
At the end of this chapter you should be able to:
- Understand what you are required to do by law to prepare a strategic assessment.
- Know which datasets you are required by law to share on a quarterly basis.
- Be able to identify additional datasets of use to the partnership.
- Develop a local process to effectively identify, collate and analyse information from the community.
- Identify key priorities and prepare a strategic assessment.
- Escalate priorities to the county strategy group (where applicable).
- Prepare a Community Safety Agreement across your county (where applicable).
- Feed community safety priorities into your Local Area Agreement in England.
- Understand how the partnership can demonstrate Intelligence-led Business Processes and other relevant Hallmarks.
- Understand the skills and knowledge that will support effective analysis and problem solving.
