Agenda item

Surrey County Council is a statutory partner on Community Safety Partnerships (CSP) at a borough/district level.

The Local Committee (Tandridge) has been delegated £3,294 to support community safety work in the borough, this money requires Local Committee agreement to be delegated for use by the local Community Safety officers.

In East Surrey (Reigate & Banstead, Mole Valley and Tandridge), there is a long history of working together, including jointly-funded posts and co-ordinated delivery of campaigns. The conclusion of a recent review conducted by partner agencies on the CSP is an agreement to formally merge the three CSPs into a single East Surrey CSP.

 A County Councillor from each District or Borough area will represent the Local Committees on the new East CSP.

Report attached.

The Committee:

REASONS:

Declarations of Interest: None

Officers attending: Gordon Falconer, Community Safety Unit Senior Manager

Petitions, Public Questions, Statements: None

The Community Safety Unit Senior Manager presented the report, explained the recommendations and reasoning and why the Community Safety Partnership (CSP) is moving towards an East Surrey CSP merge.

He continued that the emphasis was still on keeping a local focus via the appropriate means (such as the JAG and CIAG groups) and that the response locally would still remain the same.

The Vice Chairman opened up the report for discussion by the committee members.

Member Discussion – key points:

·         Although members agreed that the wider partnership will ensure that the CSP has more weight, concerns were raised regarding whether Tandridge itself will be overshadowed by the other areas which have very different problems and priorities.

·         Members moved to make the decisions and amended the first recommendation (that the CSP budget be transferred to the CSP Manager but in consultation with the Tandridge Local Committee representative, which was seconded by Mrs Helena Windsor, Mr John Orrick and Mr David Hodge).

·         Mr Michael Sydney was nominated to continue to attend as the Local Committee CSP representative (which was seconded by Mr John Orrick and Mr David Hodge) with Nick Skellett nominated as a named substitute (seconded by Mrs Sally Marks).

·         Members agreed that they would like to know more and increase reporting to the committee on the new arrangements.

·         Mr Nick Skellett suggested that the Community Safety Unit Senior Manager proposes that CSP substitutes can also attend the meetings but with non voting rights.

·         Members requested that updates be provided at informal Local Committee meetings and a yearly report to the formal Local Committee.

·         Members continued that they felt they did not hear from local inspectors as regularly as they would like to and therefore often felt out of the loop regarding trends and local issues.

·         Concerns were raised again that Tandridge has very different needs to neighbouring boroughs and may lose out as a result of the merge.

·         Gordon Falconer assured members that local focus would not be lost and that he would propose at the inaugural meeting of the East CSP that they provide reports at six monthly intervals to Local Committee’s related to the CSP Action Plans; a report after 6 months outlining what has been achieved followed by a 12 month round up report.

·         Members agreed that an annual report brought to a Formal Local Committee meeting along with the police would help to inform and support them in their contact with Community Safety in Tandridge.

The Committee: