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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 46-iii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE Welsh Affairs Committee
Police Service, Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour in Wales
Wednesday 15 December 2004 MR KERI LEWIS and CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT BRIAN GREAVES Evidence heard in Public Questions 419 - 483
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Welsh Affairs Committee on Wednesday 15 December 2004 Members present Mr Martyn Jones, in the Chair Dr Hywel Francis Julie Morgan Mrs Betty Williams Mr Roger Williams ________________ Memoranda submitted by the Community Safety Partnership and South Wales Police
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Keri Lewis, Chief Executive, Bridgend County Council and Chairperson of Bridgend Community Safety Partnership "Safer Bridgend", and Mr Brian Greaves, Chief Superintendent, Rhondda Cynon Taff Division, Co-chair of Rhondda Cynon Taff Community Safety Partnership, examined. Q419 Chairman: First of all, could I welcome you both to the Select Committee and thank you both for the very detailed evidence you have given us in writing. I would also like to note that the Committee recognises your many achievements, success and innovations. We will talk about those. We also want to talk about the problems, not surprisingly, and we would like to focus on some of the obstacles that you face and how you think the partnership working can be improved. Could you firstly just introduce both yourselves for the record, perhaps starting with you, Chief Superintendent. Mr Greaves: I am Chief Superintendent Brian Greaves. I am Divisional Commander of the Rhondda Cynon Taff Division in South Wales Police. I am also the joint chair of the Community Safety Partnership. It probably would be remiss of me if I did not say at this point that my former joint chair, Dr Kim Riley, has recently left the County of Rhondda Cynon Taff and has moved to Hull city and I think it would be proper for me to say that he can take a great deal of credit for some of the work which has actually been done over the last four or five years in Rhondda Cynon Taff. Mr Lewis: Good afternoon, Chairman. My name is Keri Lewis. I am the chief executive at Bridgend County Borough Council and I have held that post since reorganisation in 1996, and I am chairperson of the Bridgend Community Safety Partnership known as "Safer Bridgend" and I am also the chief spokesperson for Welsh chief executives on community safety issues. Chairman: Thank you. We can discuss priorities now. Q420 Mrs Williams: I would like to discuss national and local priorities in fact. The recent White Paper puts community engagement at the heart of both the policing and community safety agenda and you both understand the need for local engagement and consultation in order to achieve effective partnership. Could I ask you, how do you consult with the community, for instance through questionnaires, or do you focus on groups, and can I go on to ask how can you be sure that you are not just hearing the opinions of community leaders as you go about this consultation exercise? Mr Lewis: I am happy to lead on that. I think there is a variety of ways in which partnerships can and should engage with the local community and I think those footprints perhaps differ depending upon different parts of the principality. For example, in Bridgend we have a local radio station, Bridge FM, and we do use them as a sort of shop window to engage on thematic issues concerning the work of the Crime and Disorder Partnership and so we make contact in that way. The local authority, which is quite common in Wales, has its own county borough newspaper which reaches every household intendedly and that is published on a quarterly basis and we have a set slop within that where we can solicit views and the feedback is pretty positive. But around that I think you make a very powerful point that there are hard to reach people and I think it is penetrating into those areas. Focus groups help a great deal, I think, in that sense, but they do tend to be driven by certain key people. I think you are absolutely right there. So I think that is a challenge, as I see it, for Bridgend and I think that requires a lot of preparation. Mr Greaves: A lot of the same things that Mr Lewis has mentioned there apply in Rhondda Cynon Taff, but I think, if I can speak as a police officer, obviously every crime that we receive, every reported crime, every incident that we get called to obviously gives us an opportunity to consult with the public. Obviously whatever the problem might be that is being reported gives us an opportunity to see that problem from the perspective of the public and I think we do carefully monitor the crime incidence to get a good feel of some of the problems that we face in our local communities. On top of that we regularly have open days at police headquarters, within police stations across the county of Rhondda Cynon Taff and we take the opportunity on those occasions, obviously, to issue questionnaires to get feedback from the public. Similarly, we are involved in a lot of forums, for example the Town Centre Forums and the Licensed Victuallers' Association. So there are many different forums that we actually support and we do get a great deal of feedback from those areas as well. So I think that, combined with the attendance at local community meetings, does give us a good opportunity to get a considerable amount of feedback on local policing issues. Q421 Mrs Williams: Do you both feel that the publicity methods that you use achieve in the sense that you are able to get to the hard to reach people that you mentioned, Mr Lewis? Mr Lewis: I would have to say not at present. I think there is more work that needs to be done there in terms of identifying those latent concerns that exist within communities. Where we have done a needs assessment community safety has always come up as a very, very high concern amongst local residents and the fear of crime is even greater than the act of crime itself and one of the greatest challenges of my partnership is to convince people that the crime rates in Bridgend are falling and therefore people should not socially exclude themselves in the fear of crime. Now, some of those hard to reach groups are particularly the elderly and there is a challenge there in getting those messages across to those people because frankly those individuals are probably the least likely to be subjected to crime in my partnership area than others, but due to the fear of crime they are socially excluding themselves. So it is a major challenge to get there, to those hard to reach groups. Q422 Mrs Williams: We have different perceptions, perhaps, about hard to reach groups in society. What would be your definition? Mr Greaves: Well, I think we look at sort of ethnic minority groups and perhaps other types of groups like that, maybe gay groups, perhaps, who do not necessarily easily engage with the police service or with the local authority. As I say, we, very similar to Mr Lewis here, work very hard to try and market the Community Safety Partnership and if I am being honest I would suggest a lot of the public do not really understand what the Community Safety Partnership is all about, however hard we try. We have just recently sought to employ a marketing officer because we think it is really important. Very much like Bridgend, our crime levels are reducing, our incident levels are reducing. It is a very safe place. If you look at Rhondda Cynon Taff and Bridgend compared to other national areas the crime levels are extremely low, yet that is not the perception of the public and we have got a big job to do really to convince them that that is the case. As I say, we are very conscious of the hard to reach groups. We have got a community race relations group to try and draw in as much as we can, but there is only so much you can do. Sometimes these hard to reach groups are almost too hard to reach, but we do work hard at trying to achieve that. Q423 Mrs Williams: Thank you. Is there anything you would like to add to that? Mr Lewis: No, I think I would endorse every word of that. Q424 Mrs Williams: Could I ask Chief Superintendent Greaves, in paragraph 3.1 you mention that the targets and priorities for the 2005 - 2008 strategy will be based on public consultation, while also taking into account the national policing plan and the national intelligence model principles. Could I ask, are all national targets appropriate in Rhondda Cynon Taff? I will be asking the same question of Mr Lewis. Mr Greaves: As it happens, I think I have got an issue about nationally set targets because I think it is important that we respond locally to local needs, but as it stands at the moment the national targets that were set are relevant to Rhondda Cynon Taff. I think the main targets revolve around auto crime, burglary, violence and drugs and outside burglary, perhaps, the other three areas, the classifications completely relate to Rhondda Cynon Taff. We can improve. But if I go back to burglary, for example, on a normal day in Rhondda Cynon Taff we have got a tolerance of about three burglaries. That is in a population of 250,000, 100,000 households, and if we have any more than three burglaries in a day we know we have got a problem. That is our target level and at the moment we are on target, we are under target in fact. So my view is that once you get to a level you could be committing resources unnecessarily. For example, if we are being targeted by central government to reduce burglaries still further it could be a disproportionate focus of our resources on to something which would be almost impossible to reduce still further. I do not know if I have fully answered the question there, but I think the main thrust of the Government's national target at the moment is to some extent relevant to RCT. Mr Lewis: I think there is a clear concern nationally and at local level with matters relating to community safety. As I said, in every needs assessment we do it is there and therefore I think it is how one interprets that into the targets and the priorities that one sets. I think my view is that yes, in Bridgend I think the template of national priorities does fit squarely in the main - and I say in the main - with the priorities of the partnership, but I have to say that there are perhaps some nuances where I feel that perhaps some flexibility in terms of target setting and therefore some local indicators could be brought to bear which could be used to persuade government funders that funding streams should come towards that. The classic in Bridgend is our night time economy issues. There are grave concerns around matters of night time economy within the town centre of Bridgend and the Divisional Commander and I continually engage on those matters and clearly as a local authority through licensing powers we can facilitate that through the aegis of the partnership. But that to us is an immense local priority and whilst we could set local targets around that, I do not think the national target setting would assist us in terms of the funding streams to support that. Q425 Mrs Williams: Is there any conflict, would you say, between local and national targets and priorities? Mr Lewis: Personally, I would not say there is a conflict but I think there perhaps could be a greater degree of homogeneity, synergy between the two. Mr Greaves: Could I just say as well that I think the majority of our national targets tend to be quantitative and not qualitative, and that is another issue for us really on a local basis. It is not just about bean counting, it is about the quality of service that people are actually given. So I think there is an important point to be made there as well. In my view, target setting should be tiered to some extent and that is what we are trying to do in the next strategy within Rhondda Cynon Taff so that we can look at the different elements of support within the partnership and how they can apply to the bigger target. An example of that might be the removal of vehicles, abandoned vehicles perhaps from the environment, which might help to reduce sort of anti-social behaviour and criminal damage. So it is about having a tiered set of indicators, I think, maybe looking at that national objective. Q426 Mrs Williams: Do you there is conflict between local and national priorities? Mr Greaves: As I said, I think, earlier on, I do not think there is. I think the majority of targets are relevant in Rhondda Cynon Taff but I think there are certain areas, as Mr Lewis suggests, where we need a bit more flexibility to focus on the things which are priorities in that area. To some extent the targeting at national level does actually conflict with the National Intelligence Model, which suggests that if we survey the problems in our area and we look at the things that are higher priorities that is where we should be applying our resources. Now, we might be being told in Rhondda Cynon Taff that our priorities are perhaps drugs and yet nationally we are being told we must reduce burglaries when our burglaries are what I believe to be - I hate to use the words tolerant level but you could argue that they are so low that it would be almost impossible to get them down still further. It is not a case of ignoring it, you still monitor it, watch it and do what you can to reduce it, but it does not necessarily drive the thrust of your resourcing. Q427 Mrs Williams: You both touched upon this earlier, but in determining the Community Safety Partnership strategy how do you harmonize local and national priorities there? Mr Greaves: Well, as I said to you, I think what our plan is and what we have tried to do - and it gets more sophisticated and more professional each time and this is now the third strategy we are about to draw up - and what we are hoping to do now with this new strategy is a tiered approach to target setting. We will be looking at the national drivers, at the National Intelligence Model, at some sort of objective for the partnership for the next three years and that is important. That will come from the audit. Then what we will do, hopefully, is look at the targets we have been set. We know already that, for example, we will be looking to reduce overall crime by 15% over the next three years, between 2005 and 2008, and I think then the sophistication is in looking at all the different partners within the partnership to see how they can contribute to that overall objective and a tiered level of indicators supporting the overall objective. As I say, I think we are becoming sophisticated enough now to be able to give that a great deal of meaning and there is the potential for it to really work and happen. Q428 Dr Francis: Could we move on specifically to targets and performance. You may have answered some of these questions in part, so I apologise for that. Could I ask you both to comment at which level you think national and local targets for Community Safety Partnerships in Wales should be set, UK Government level, National Assembly level or local level? Mr Lewis: In fairness to the Chief Superintendent, I think he made a powerful point a little earlier where he said that in one of Cynon Taff instances concerning burglary there could be a disproportionate allocation of resources to something which was not a local issue predominantly. I think that is a very powerful point, and I think my take is that we should have a bottom up approach as well as a top down, not imposition but a top down view and they should meet somewhere in the middle intendedly, and there is no reason why they could not. So to answer your question directly, I think there should be a far higher level of consultation with Community Safety Partnerships before there are the rolling out of national priorities because I believe, particularly in Wales for reasons that I will take you to later in my evidence, there is a propensity of having a far more focused engagement around issues like community safety in view of the succinctness of the institutional arrangements that exist within the principality. So I think those should be taken into account very predominantly in the setting of national priorities and targets at national level. Mr Greaves: I think to some extent I have answered this. I think really there is an onus on Government to try and reduce crime and improve the quality of life and anti-social behaviour and I think we have been very successful in the partnerships and the police over the last few years because we have been sort of performance driven. So I think there is an onus upon national government to set targets. I think the secret is, as I have said, about balancing that in a tiered way through regional and local structures to actually respond and I think we just need to be given a little bit more freedom, to some extent, of being able to apply priorities based on local needs, but always supporting and contributing to the broader targets which would be set nationally. Q429 Dr Francis: The White Paper institutes a new rigorous performance regime for CSPs and the CSP performance targets will be different from the police performance targets. How will this new performance regime impact on the partnership arrangements in Bridgend and RCT? Mr Lewis: I think expectantly we, as a partnership, are preparing ourselves for a higher level of performance management in terms of the assessment of the outputs of the partnership and, to be blunt, perhaps that is something that we have not been particularly good at historically because of the development of the partnership itself. As a partnership we have different partners with different cultures and different constitutions which they have to run to, but to come together under the mantle of the Community Safety Partnership. So whilst community safety is a priority issue, I think the issues of performance management probably have not been to the fore on the first two rounds, as they most certainly will have to be on the third. Now, through the crime audit, as with Rhondda Cynon Taff, we are moving towards the third community safety strategy and crime reduction strategy and within that there will be some self-imposed very hard edged targets that we will be subjecting ourselves to as a partnership. Hopefully, those will be at least commensurate with national expectations and possibly, if we can factor in local indicators, even higher. That will be my objective as chair of the partnership. Mr Greaves: I do not think it is anything really too much to worry about. I think it is important very much into the sort of coterminosity and actually doing our work in bite-sized bits, and I can speak for both authorities that from a policing perspective we police by ward. So our policing structures and our patrolled structure is based on wards. I suspect what the White Paper is actually edging towards is more community focus within those wards with more accountability down as far as the ward level. We already actually collect data by wards, so it does give us a very, very tight focus on what is happening in a localised way. I think the only danger for me is that it does not become too bureaucratic - we have got fifty-three wards in Rhondda Cynon Taff - that we do not have fifty-three sort of auditing structures which feed in then to the broader partnership because I think that might become a little bit counter-productive. But I think it is important if we are going to respond to the problems of communities that we need to be actually, if you like, at the coal face and understanding what those problems are. Q430 Dr Francis: So generally speaking you think it will help rather than hinder the effective role of the police in the partnership? Mr Greaves: Well, I do not see that it is going to cause any problem. We already do it to some extent as a partnership in terms of the data that we keep. I think there are areas where we can improve in data sharing and data collection. We already measure what we do down as far as the ward level, so those systems (computer systems and auditing systems) are already in place. I just worry that this does not become all too bureaucratic and we have sort of monthly assessments by groups coming together and trying to work out what the data is telling them because I suspect that will be too sophisticated and costly in time. Q431 Dr Francis: I guess this question ties in with what you have just said really. It is based upon a comment made by a CSP chair. One suggestion for improved partnership working is that the Government set common or complementary targets across all agencies involved in the partnership and the CSP chair says that all agencies could then be "singing from the same hymn sheet instead of trying to harmonise a disparate set of sometimes clashing agendas." Do you think this is necessary and desirable? Mr Greaves: I think it makes sense. It will give us some focus. But I do not think we can get away from the fact that we have got different organisations joining this partnership and not all our objectives are necessarily focused on community safety. I think we must not lose sight of that. But in terms of community safety, yes, if there was one set of performance indicators which we all subscribed to and we all supported, it goes back to my sort of tiered approach, that each organisation is given an objective in order to achieve the bigger objective, though I think at the same time we must not forget that the health authorities have got other objectives and other targets which are not necessarily community safety related. Mr Lewis: I think the question also takes the thinking process to issues of devolved and non-devolved sanctions and the degree of conformity in relation to how those services are brought together in a communal form within the aegis if the partnerships to which they contribute, which is a matter again which I have researched in my evidence because I think there is an issue there of conformity and engagement, which I think strikes to the heart of your question about having commonality of approach amongst different agencies which collectively come under the banner of the Community Safety Partnership, and I believe that is a capture. I believe that can be done and, taking the Divisional Commander's point, if that is the case - and I would agree, whoever chaired the partnership - I would concur with those remarks. Q432 Dr Francis: Without actually going over the ground again, there is a question which I have here of how can this be achieved. Now, you may have already given the answer, but do I need to tease out a little bit more from you? Are you actually saying, perhaps, that Government ought to be listening a bit more at all levels to these kinds of, not concerns but observations that you have about having more qualitative measures? Mr Greaves: Yes. As I say, it is very difficult really, I would imagine, for central government to decide what are the priorities because in different areas there will be different needs and different priorities in the more deprived areas, possibly, than in the more affluent areas of the country. But I think what they have tried to do is to focus on the things which genuinely cause concern in communities. So I think the national setting of targets seems to be reasonably sound to me. It is about how we interpret that locally and how we actually contribute as a Community Safety Partnership to achieving those targets which are actually set, I think. Q433 Dr Francis: If we can move on particularly now to performance measurements. This is a question for you, Chief Superintendent Greaves. How do you measure and monitor your own performance? Mr Greaves: Well, as a partnership in this current strategic period (the three years that are now coming to a conclusion) when we set out three years ago we had six themes to the strategy. In each of those six themes objectives were set along with targets and in each theme we identified a theme leader. Every three months a group meets to review the progress that that team leader and his team are making in respect of that theme. So for the last two and a half years they have been meeting on a quarterly basis to review the performance of the overall strategy. So, as I said to you, in the first three years we were not so sophisticated. In this current three years we have become more sophisticated and we are optimistic that in the next three years we will become even more sophisticated in terms of measuring our performance against objectives. Q434 Dr Francis: Could you tell me a little bit specifically about how you have tackled the drugs problem. I visited the Rhondda, I think in September, two years ago with a group of Members of Parliament. I am sure it was your predecessor that I met then, and we were quite impressed with the very strong community focus and the partnerships that were developed in schools, and so on. Could you tell us a bit about all this work over the last two years. Mr Greaves: Yes. I think it stems back to the year 2002 - 2002 and I think it would be fair to say then that we had twelve drug-related deaths. The majority of those deaths occurred in the Rhondda valleys and were related to heroin abuse. At the same time, I think, from the point of view of South Wales Police there was grave concern that Class A drugs were being imported over the Severn Bridge from areas like Bristol and that we were seeing early signs of organised crime, groups trying to set up in Cardiff. In consequence, strategically the force through one of our ACCs took up the initiative and Operation Tarian came from that, Tarian actually being the Welsh word for shield, if you like, as a way of explaining, to try and protect South Wales from organised crime groups and the increase of Class A drugs. Tarian basically as a strategy was designed to cover four elements really: enforcement, and that is catching people, convicting people and seizing drugs; education, actually working within our schools educating youths of the dangers of drugs; treatment - obviously we were looking to get as much treatment as we could to those people who were suffering from drugs; and there was also a community element to it, and I think that is probably something you were alluding to. From a community point of view, organisations like FADs (Families Against Drugs) in the Cynon Valley have certainly helped us to focus on those families where drugs have actually been the blight of their existence and lives. But in each of these areas in terms of education we have had support from the Welsh Assembly Government to employ extra officers and to adopt a Wales school programme. Also, there is a scheme called Dare, which we brought into the Rhondda valleys in order to actually educate children of certain age groups. So there has been a sort of joined up approach to dealing with drugs across these four elements and in each area we have attempted to put elements of measures in, objectives, targets, and in consequence we have had a great deal of success in dealing with it. Q435 Dr Francis: Could you tell me something about that Dare project in terms of measurement. I know that there was some scepticism expressed when you were beginning that work. Has that scepticism disappeared? Mr Greaves: Well, the scepticism really has not come from the parents, the pupils and the teachers who have had the benefits of the Dare programme. I think the difficulty with Dare is that it was very sort of singly dimensional, if you like, it just hit year nine children, and I think the argument was that there was no subsequent input at later stages, or even at earlier stages for children and that Dare was very much an Americanised scheme which was brought across here without any evaluation of its value. But just speaking from experience and speaking to parents and school teachers in the Rhondda valleys where Dare is actually being delivered there is a tremendous support for it. Q436 Dr Francis: Do not get me wrong. When we visited, I think it was Blaenrhondda Primary School, there was not general enthusiasm for it then. I think it was just beginning at that time. But we heard externally that there were those kinds of expressions of scepticism. Could I finally go back to this question of qualitative measures. Could you tell us about the way in which you are actually measuring the effectiveness of Community Safety Partnerships qualitatively. Mr Greaves: Again, I think it is through consultation. It is through surveys with members of the public. We are currently going through the crime audit at this particular time. We have also published articles in the local newspaper and we have left little scripts within those articles for them to write back and to give us some feedback on the services that people have received and the quality of the response from the Community Safety Partnership, but generally it has been by questionnaire and through the crime audit that we have recently undertaken and which we are expected to undertake every three years. Q437 Dr Francis: Would you include in that qualitative measuring, the public perception of the police? How would you measure that? Mr Greaves: Well, I think the only way you can do it is through a questionnaire and perhaps surveys. Q438 Dr Francis: Do you do that? Mr Greaves: We have done that as part of the current audit. Also, in certain classifications of crime, for example if you are the subject of a dwelling-house burglary, we will actually send you a questionnaire (this is a South Wales Police based issue) asking the occupier of the house what sort of service they had, whether they were satisfied with the service they had. Similarly, in all reported hate crimes we actually send a questionnaire to the complainers trying to establish the quality of service that was received. So we do get an awful lot of data coming back to us where we are able to self-analyse and, as I said at the very start of the proceedings, every single crime we go to, every single incident we attend a measure of feedback comes to us from the public which we have to respond to, and there is no better consultation really than actually speaking to people who become the victims of crime. The difficulty we have, perhaps, are those people who do not interact with us, the people who do not become victims, the people who do not call on our services. It is trying to capture them really because sometimes the measure of public perception can be impaired by the fact that they have become a victim. So sometimes it is important that we see the whole population, even those who do not become the victims of crime. That is where I feel the questionnaires come in. Dr Francis: Thank you. Q439 Chairman: Could I just ask you, when you are looking at targets and you set your own targets, what if they conflict with other authorities, for example the Health Service? How do you align your targets with other authorities and other parts of the partnership? Mr Lewis: I think that really strikes to the very ethos of the partnership because you have to have brokerage on that and there have to be tolerances around that. So whilst wearing a local authority hat I may take a very strident view in one area, colleagues in health or probation might take not a different view but perhaps a less ardent view and in that respect the tolerances have to come in and you have to come to some form of brokerage whereby you have the ownership of what is commonly agreed. It might not suit everybody's agenda but one of the fundamental thriving parts of the partnership is that you have to do that. It does drive you to the business table to actually broker what you are prepared to agree to. Mr Greaves: I think it is always helpful for the police because I think we have probably got the most to gain from a very effective Community Safety Partnership. I think it is more difficult when one of the other partners, perhaps with not so much to gain or perhaps a perceived lack of gain, has to contribute as well. I think that is the skill when it comes to negotiating to what extent did they contribute or participate in order to achieve the overall target. Q440 Mr Williams: Good afternoon, gentlemen. Perhaps we could address relationships both within the Community Safety Partnerships and between Community Safety Partnerships and other organisations. Perhaps you could tell us first what are the essential ingredients for a successful Community Safety Partnership. Mr Greaves: Well, I think probably the most critical is effective leadership and commitment from the key partners is another essential part of that. But I think it is having vision. It is setting out a clear vision for the partnership. It is probably understanding what he problems are. It is about knowing your areas and knowing what the problems are. It is doing the audits and understanding what the public wants and understanding to some extent how the community engages, how it works and how it functions. Then once you have got all that information probably this is where the benefit of the audit comes in. Once you understand what the community is all about and what the problems are that are facing that community it then gives you the opportunity to set some sort of target for what you want to achieve in the three year period. If you have got the right people in that process and you do make the right decisions in terms of what you need to address, then it is about setting targets and applying resources to actually delivering that overall objective and you need to carefully evaluate and monitor then what has happened to make sure that you have not just set off on some sort of journey that you are not likely to get to the end of because it is not proportional, it is not realistic. We need realistic targets, achievable targets, and I think then with the proper leadership that we empower people, we bring people in, we engage people, we make sure that they feel part of it, and basically we market what we do because we do not do that very well and it does make me despair sometimes when I look at our crime figures and I look at the way we are performing - and I am not just speaking for Rhondda Cynon Taff, I know similar issues apply in Bridgend, and yet when you read the local press the impression you get is that the public do not feel that confident about the communities they live in. So I think really it is about very, very effective leadership. It is understanding what it is we are trying to achieve and it is setting realistic targets to achieve it. Q441 Mr Williams: Would you like to add anything, Mr Lewis? Mr Lewis: Yes. I think I am with all of that. The only sort of emphasis that I think I would place alongside that is the need to have the partnership in a highly visible form within the community and my colleague is absolutely right, there is transparency there that we have a concern about, and it is about showing the partnership can deliver. I think that is crucial because that is about not just getting partnership ownership of the CSP agenda, it is about getting community ownership as well. So if the partnership can achieve a higher visibility and an achievable, provable level of performance then it becomes community owned, and I think that is one of the life-bloods of the partnership; not its partners per se but the community that it serves. Q442 Mr Williams: Superintendent Greaves, you talked about leadership. Where does the leadership drive, energy, focus come from to make Rhondda Cynon Taff and Bridgend successful partnerships? Mr Greaves: I think it comes primarily from probably the chair. In Rhondda Cynon Taff, as I say, it is a joint chair between the Divisional Police Commander and the chief executive. Very similar arrangements exist in Bridgend. But as I say, that is primarily where it comes from but it is about the engagement of all the other agencies. What we have in Rhondda Cynon Taff, if I could just use an example, is a very strong voluntary sector. We have got three crime prevention panels in each of our three areas, Rhondda, Cynon and Taff, which are in effect small businesses, and they have been given support by the broader partnership. We have invested, we have committed to them, we have supported them, we have empowered them and they have grown quite considerably. I think that is the secret really, and probably one thing I missed in the first part was proper resourcing. It may be a question that comes later but it is really about the different funding streams that the partnership actually has, which are very complicated. They are improving, but there are still probably too many and that they are too prescriptive and we just need that little bit of flexibility, I suspect. Mr Lewis: Yes. I think I can add little to that other than to perhaps emphasise the concepts and the principles of inclusivity because I think there is a danger that whilst there is a national take and priority setting and a local interpretation of that, I think there must always be a responsiveness to community need and an ability to be able to link in to that, to understand it and to engage it. I think it does go back, as I was saying earlier, to some of what I call the harder to reach groups where you can think that you are meeting needs but effectively there is a large part of the community that has a latent concern and you have not tapped it. I think there is a major challenge on that. Q443 Mr Williams: Thank you. Perhaps you could share with us which partners in your partnership, in your opinion, pull their weight and within the privacy of this meeting perhaps the ones which do not pull their weight. Mr Greaves: Well, if I can speak for Rhondda Cynon Taff's point of view, all our statutory partners do to some extent pull their weight. I think, if I am being totally honest, probably the police and the local authority are the stronger players, but then I think it would be fair and right to say that perhaps health and probation have had difficulties over the last couple of years in terms of reorganisation, new structures within their own organisations. I think probably it may not be right but they may perceive that they have got less to gain by contributing more intently into the partnership arrangements. But really speaking I would say that we have got good partnership arrangements, good support in Rhondda Cynon Taff, but really probably the prime players are the police and the local authority. Mr Lewis: Yes. We have not shared thoughts before we came in, I can assure you, but I do go with that as well and I think I would like to dwell on that a little because I think there is a lot of good faith and a lot of commitment by statutory lead partners to the community safety agenda and it is not a matter of mala fides, I think it is more a question of a dislocation of structural change which has effectively, how shall I say, sidelined to a certain extent certain key partners. There is one plea I think I would make and that is for some degree of institutional stability to allow us to get on with the agenda and to deliver it because it is the case that where you have institutional change you have different faces at the same business table, you have an inability to commit because of the forthcoming change process and therefore a lack of guarantee of being able to deliver on that commitment, and I think that has created an element of not destabilisation but an element of retardation to the delivery of community safety within the partnerships. Q444 Mr Williams: We have been told by some police officers (but not in the South Wales area) that local authorities have been slow to acknowledge their roles in the partnership and the examples of police driving forward initiatives which should have been really the responsibility of local authorities, such as clearing graffiti. Have you had any examples of that in either of your two partnerships? Mr Greaves: I had probably be very careful what I say with the chief executive sat next to me, but no, we have no experience of that in Rhondda Cynon Taff. I have made some reference to Kim Riley at the start of my presentation and tremendous support really right across the board. So no, I cannot give any examples of failure in that respect. Q445 Mr Williams: Good. As I say, we have not had that mentioned by police officers in the South Wales area. Do you think it is necessary to further strengthen the enforcement mechanism of the statutory requirement for partnership, for example along similar lines to those outlined in the Civil Contingencies Bill? Mr Greaves: Well, personally I think it is disappointing if we have to do that, but I think one of the weaknesses of the Crime and Disorder Act really was the sanctions. Section 17 is there to probably act as a sanction but I am not sure it is ever really enforced. I suppose what the whole thing needs is some sort of carrot and stick approach to it really. There has to be some incentive for people to engage and work hard in partnership, I think, and perhaps if that could be worked on - I am not sure it needs to be embedded in legislation but at the end of the day I think we do need something just to try and encourage a little bit more involvement basically. Q446 Mr Williams: Mr Lewis, in your evidence you indicated that you may have some concerns about the adequacy of a statutory definition concerning the legal status of Community Safety Partnerships. Could you explain a little more about this and how it impacts on the partnership working, and perhaps any ideas on what can be done to address it? Mr Lewis: Yes. This is a matter, I have to say, which has increasingly exercised my mind as the agenda has rolled on and whilst I have been the chair of Safer Bridgend, and I think a call has to be made by Government presumptively as to what is going to be the vehicle to drive community safety within communities. My point there is that if that decision is that it does rest with Community Safety Partnerships then I think there needs, in my opinion (that is a personal opinion), to be perhaps greater prescription as to what the powers are of the partnership, particularly in matters of contracting. Now, as my colleague and I both know where, for example, funding streams arrive to enable us to engage individuals in employment such as a Community Safety Partnership coordinator or an Anti-social Behaviour Partnership coordinator those contracts of employment must rest somewhere and inevitably in my case they rest with the local authority. As my evidence says, we are looking to obtain premises as a partnership office. As a body searching to contract, it would probably be the local authority again. There is nothing untoward in that, but if the partnership is going to be empowered, particularly in future terms with regard to commissioning matters then I would have to say I would feel pretty uneasy as a chair of the partnership in engaging in commissioning matters unless there was perhaps a greater degree of definition of the statutory roles of the partnership. Now, that is a personal view. My colleagues might not share it, but I am increasingly exercised on that matter, I must be honest. Q447 Mr Williams: Do you see any other obstacles in the development of the partnerships in both your areas? Mr Lewis: I think my colleague referred rightly to funding streams and I think I touched upon that in my evidence. They tend to come in diverse forms and sometimes in dollops and we cannot form a plan particularly. In fairness they are driven very often by national priorities which, as we have said, do overlay on local need and circumstance, but if we were to have some greater degree of predilection in what those funding streams will be then I think the sustainability of what I can do as a partnership will be far more enhanced. I am not saying it is stop, go, stop, go, but most certainly we do not have the confidence to commit on a two, three or four year programme of issues which I think would have the penetration in terms of local community benefit based upon the current funding streams. Mr Greaves: I think that is really very cogent because at the end of the day when we are often looking to employ people to work for the partnership we can only employ them on short-term contracts and I suspect sometimes we do not always get the very best people applying for those positions. I think if there was some level of long-termism about the whole thing then it would be much more beneficial, if you like, to the partnerships. Q448 Mr Williams: Moving on to external relationships, perhaps you could say something about the relationship between your partnership, the Home Office, the National Assembly for Wales and the Welsh Assembly Government? Mr Greaves: Well, all I can say really is that from a policing point of view obviously we link in to the Home Office and obviously there are certain directions that we have there. In the Welsh Assembly Government there is a regional director who is actually, I think, employed by the Home Office but working in the Welsh Assembly. Obviously there are certain directions that come from that. Mr Lewis mentioned earlier on the fact that in the make-up of partnerships, for example in relation to health, the local authority are devolved whereas the probation and the police still remain under the Home Office. So there are always some tensions there that exist, but my experience is that the Welsh Assembly along with the crime director to some extent follow the procedures as they should do. It is a little bit prescriptive. As we said earlier on, going back to the funding streams, I sometimes wonder why there are so many different funding streams. I would like to see an element of trust coming to the Community Safety Partnerships. If we have done our audit, if we have put our plans and our strategies together, why is it that a certain amount of finance cannot be allocated? As long as we are reasonable in the way that we invest that finance and as long as it is directed towards achieving our objectives then surely that is what it must be rather than having all these disparate pieces of finance and commitments that we seem to have to contend with. Mr Lewis: Yes. My take on that, Chairman, is that I think clearly there are tiers of responsibility and one has to accept the reality of that and work within it. I think the capture there is to have an engaging dialogue between those different tiers which does elicit what Her Majesty's Government is thinking about in terms of national priorities, how the Welsh Assembly Government can contribute to that through managing the devolved functions that it possesses and how we as a partnership can really knit into all that. I think perhaps what I would strive for is perhaps a greater degree of networking and a greater degree of frameworking around those issues. I think it is there and I think it can be achieved and I know those dialogues are engaged, but sometimes we as partnerships do feel perhaps a little bit remote from that and I think if we could be within that loop of engagement then that is the bottom up approach I was talking about a little earlier. Q449 Mr Williams: Just one last question. Superintendent Greaves touched on it, but it may be a political sort of question. Do you think the partnerships would be able to function more efficiently if there was more devolution of police powers to the Assembly? Mr Greaves: I think there is a possibility that might be the case, but then I can see the benefits of policing in Wales continuing to link into the Home Office and having more of a national drive. I think there may be more complications with the devolving of the authority of the police than actually leaving it where it is, but I will not go into too much detail on that. Mr Lewis: I have difficulty in responding to that question. My colleague is nearer to the heart of the question than I. All I can say is that at a local level in Bridgend I am confident that there is most certainly a commitment from the local constabulary. We work closely together. I would have to say some six years ago I would probably have met the Divisional Commander on one or two occasions perhaps in a year; I now meet him probably twice or three times a week. So I think that is indicative of the way in which the agenda can be delivered, frankly. Mr Williams: Thank you. Q450 Chairman: Moving on to the relationships between the devolution settlement and how it is panning out in Wales compared to England, do you know the difference between chairing a Community Safety Partnership in Wales and a Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership in England? Mr Lewis: The only response I think authoritatively and genuinely I could give to that is through my networking with my colleagues in England, and I think two of the immense strengths that Wales has is firstly it has unitary local government, and I think that is an immense strength. So you do not have the shire county and the district, and I think that is an immensely powerful thing to have. Secondly, we have Welsh Assembly Government, which does provide a great focus around the engagement between, as I say, the devolved and non-devolved functions. So I think it comes back to a point I have played quite a lot on in my evidence and that is the ability in Wales to have a far greater focus in that sense and a greater compactness because I think as a principality we can speak with one voice on the same issues within the crime and disorder agenda, albeit that the geography perhaps might be a little different. I think a telling example of that is how secure accommodation for young offenders was dealt with on an all Wales basis and representations made, particularly in relation to North Wales where of course the accommodation was outside the principality itself, and we were instrumental there in obtaining linguistic support for young people to actually accommodate them and their needs in an English environment where otherwise they would have felt even more at risk, perhaps, and isolated. So taking your point backwards, Chairman, there is, in my judgment, a far greater focus and a far greater potential for development as a consequence. Mr Greaves: Just adding to that, I think there are tremendous benefits in coterminosity. In South Wales we have got police commands which are coterminous with our local authority areas. We have got local health boards and even Probation and the Fire Service are doing their very best to try and provide support on a coterminous basis. I think then you have got a clear definition. All these areas of responsibility coming together and focusing on one particular geographic area does actually bring with it massive benefits, I think, and I am sure that is something that they really struggle with. Having spoken to other senior police officers in England, coming to the meeting table, if you like, with so many different people and covering so many different areas actually causes them some considerable problems. Q451 Dr Francis: You do not have a coterminosity in South-East Wales though, do you? Mr Greaves: Gwent, no. I am talking about the South Wales police area. I am not quite certain. I think there is coterminosity but, for example, one division may cover two local authority areas. But I think those are the general boundaries that they work within. Q452 Chairman: Do you think that the difference in titles is important? Are they doing the same job? Are they doing the same job in a different way or are they doing a different job? One is called the Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership and we are talking about community safety in Wales. Is it different? Do you know what I mean? Mr Lewis: I think the nomenclature implies a difference. I think I would go with that. Yes, it does, most certainly, and community safety does give the inference of a wider mantle than simply reducing crime because, as I think I made the point in Bridgend's case, crime is falling. My challenge is to persuade certain sections of the community that that is so and that they are not in danger of walking across a road to another place at ten or eleven o'clock at night because they will be the last people, frankly, to be liable to commit a crime. So I think the nomenclature of wording does send a message. I would tend to agree with that, yes. Mr Greaves: I was just going to say that I think in terms of what we do it is about emergency planning, it is about your safety; it is a much broader thing than just crime and disorder reduction, it is about all those things, and I think perhaps the title is more appropriate in Wales. I am sure England are doing the same thing, but the title seems more appropriate in Wales. Q453 Chairman: This is addressed to you, Mr Lewis. In paragraph 9.4 you mention concerns about "the disparity of joint working which can arise within this matrix of devolved and non-devolved statutory responsibilities." Obviously one of the things we have been looking at with our Committee is the fact that we have both devolved and non-devolved bodies in a partnership to try and achieve the same thing. What is the practical impact of this on the work you are doing? Mr Lewis: It is not a dysfunctional issue and I think it would be wrong to put it in that level of importance, but it most certainly can be debilitative and most certainly I think can sap some of the partnership drive as a consequence. I think we have already rehearsed some of the reasons why we have found ourselves in that position, not least of all through institutional change and as a consequence of those decisions being taken at national level, which in turn have resulted in some degree of reduced commitment within the partnership working. We have also, I think, Chairman, rehearsed issues to previous questions around national target-setting and how they are transmogrified at local level. Equally, can I say, the issue of funding streams. I want to revisit that in the answer to your question because whilst the partnership itself has funding stream support which is somewhat diverse in the way in which it comes through, each partner also has its own resource base and if there is a national directive as to the extent to which those resources can be used and for what at local level then that can be an inhibitor to commitment in relation to the wider enterprise. I think there are some degrees of evidence around the publication of strategies as well because if I remember correctly the prevent and deter strategy was published in England and then I think it was sometime later it was actually published in Wales. I think that evidence is again the issue of conformity between the two processes. It should be one and the same, of course. Q454 Chairman: If you were to give one or two examples of how you could improve the situation, could you and would you give them now? Mr Lewis: Oh, if I could bottle that and sell that, Chairman, I think I would be a rich person. It is a really bold question. I do not think it is an impossibility or a contradiction in objectives for there to be a national framework for partner institutions but with an ability for them to have local discretion and to engage in what are deemed to be local priorities whilst paying due cognizance to the national blanket issues, and I think it is that flexibility that partner institutions, if empowered, could add immense more value to the agenda. Local government has it because it is obviously instilled in local government because provided the local authority decides that democratically that is what they want to do, the intra vires, clearly it can be done. But I think it is that element of local discretion which can be factored into partnership arrangements. Q455 Chairman: That kind of leads on to my last question on this section, the All Wales Crime and Disorder Forum that I think you were instrumental in setting up in 2002. Did you see that as having that kind of role, coordinating things on an all Wales basis, and do you think we ought to have something like that? Mr Lewis: I think since that began and cessated (which I hope is a temporary cessation) we have now developed an all Wales youth offending strategy. I think there is a very powerful message in that because it shows quite clearly that Wales does have the propensity for delivering on an all Wales basis on given subject matters, one of which is youth offending, in terms of a strategic initiative and the other, in my judgment, is crime and disorder itself. I think my evidence rehearses some of the areas which, whilst it was functioning, the forum took itself to and to have within one room four chief constables, a large number of chief executives from Wales and key players and other institutions on matters of strategic importance such as drug markets, secure accommodation issues, that is a very powerful voice to be able to engage in that loop of exchange that I was sharing in relation to an earlier question. I have made approaches to Welsh Assembly Government and I am happy to continue to lead on that, but the problem is it must have a resource base to support it. Previously, I was supporting it administratively through my authority capacity and frankly it just could not move on. I think there is a place for it and, as my colleague was making the point earlier, I think there is a sub-set of overarching leadership groups within the principality as well which can deliver at a strategic regional level whilst the all Wales strategy I think enables the north to talk to the south and east to west. Unless I am misdirecting myself, I think the positions of institutions at Home Office level would be more engaged if there were to be that one voice speaking on behalf of principality institutions through Welsh Assembly Government. I think that would be a very vocal position to adopt. Chairman: That is interesting. Thank you. Q456 Dr Francis: Could we move on now specifically to the question of tackling anti-social behaviour. Would you say that anti-social behaviour does pose a problem to you in RCT and Bridgend, and what is the nature of that problem? Mr Greaves: It does actually. Obviously we talked a bit earlier about the force and, as I say, I think in both areas in terms of crime reduction we have done exceptionally well, yet the perception of the public is that things are not perhaps as good as they could be. I think that has been, to some extent, driven by their interpretation of what they perceive to be anti-social behaviour, young children to some extent hanging around on street corners or loutish behaviour perhaps coming from pubs and different things that happens. So it is important. Coming out of the current audit that we are doing, it is a very, very high priority for the public that anti-social behaviour is addressed and addressed effectively. Of course, we have got legislation in order to allow us to deal with that. I do not know how much you want me to go on to here, but we have a process in place to deal with anti-social behaviour in Rhondda Cynon Taff and that particular procedure has been adopted right across the South Wales Police area and is proving extremely effective, but it does not necessarily mean that we directly go for an anti-social behaviour order as a primary target. It is about working through a system of interventions which actually would lead to anti-social behaviour in the worst cases. Q457 Dr Francis: What about Bridgend? Mr Lewis: Yes, I would endorse that. Anti-social behaviour in terms of the audit concerns is high, but there again tolerances differ in relation to what is intolerable and what is tolerable, or even acceptable, and that differs within Bridgend as it differs within the principality. I think there is this difficulty of definition around that, but we have adopted a similar process of engagement on a four stage basis where the ASBO, frankly, is a last resort, it is not a first line of engagement, and we are finding that the interventions that we are using are reducing the amount of people moving forward. Although, having said that, if there is a need ultimately to move to an ASBO then the facilities are in place so to do. Q458 Dr Francis: Do I take it from your responses, both of you, that it is a priority for you? If it was not a national target would it still be a priority for you? Mr Lewis: Yes. Mr Greaves: It will be certainly a priority, yes. Q459 Dr Francis: Would you say that you are actually winning that battle? Mr Greaves: I think we are. If I can just speak for Rhondda Cynon Taff, I have got some statistics here since November 2002. On 795 occasions we have actually issued - Mr Lewis referred to a four tier system which we all adopt, but we issue a first letter which sets out the problems and gives the recipient the opportunity to start responding that that in a positive way. From seven hundred and ninety five first letters we only move down then to a total of ninety-two second letters. So on six hundred odd occasions obviously the first letter has the desired effect. If we move then from the second letter to the third letter, which is basically an anti-social behaviour contract, it drops from ninety-one down to nineteen, so again you see quite a considerable reduction and in fact in Rhondda Cynon Taff in that period it has actually led to twelve Anti-social Behaviour Orders. Rather than going in at the front end and using the Anti-social Behaviour legislation, we have gone through a staged process which in its own right justifies the ASBO at the end of the day but it limits the number of ASBOs that we have actually achieved. I am always very conscious that we should not forget that we have got primary legislation to deal with lots of the problems which might be perceived as anti-social behaviour. If somebody commits damage, there is legislation to deal with criminal damage. If somebody acts in an aggressive, violent way we have got offences whereby we can arrest people. So I think we have got to be careful we do not try and use the Anti-social Behaviour legislation for everything that we come to deal with. Q460 Dr Francis: Is the same pattern emerging in Bridgend? Are you winning the battle and do you have the same approach in terms of ASBOs? Mr Lewis: Oh, absolutely the same approach, yes, and we find that young people, people, are taken out of the system of process on the various levels of progress and I think as we speak I am probably conscious of only five individuals out of the numbers who started who really are still perhaps moving towards the contemplation of an ASO because the interventions that we are using are taking people out of the system as they move forward. I think that that is a more constructive approach and far from being just a matter of mathematics, I think the sustainability of turning around potential ASBO candidates is greater by the long-term interventions than it is simply by virtue of the actual order itself. The order itself is punitive, clearly. Having said that, the sustainability on improved behaviour is far more likely if you get the young person to want to change and that is the intervention process on the three stages. Q461 Dr Francis: At the beginning of your question you corrected yourself. You said "young person" or "young people" and then you said "people" and then at the end of your answer you said "young person". Mr Lewis: Yes. I think I am conscious of the fact that like many people when one thinks of ASBOs one does think about young people predominantly. Q462 Dr Francis: Is that a mistake? Mr Lewis: I do not think it is a mistake, I think it is a natural tendency, but I do think that there is good evidence to show that clearly we have got to keep a wide scheme of thought around ASBOs and not just think of young people as being the centre of them. They tend to get the publicity, but you are right, one has to correct oneself and just get back to reality and say it is a wider issue than just young people. Q463 Dr Francis: So statistically then in terms of the ASBOs issued are they young people or not? Mr Lewis: I think in the majority they are. Mr Greaves: Could I answer that? In terms of Rhondda Cynon Taff, I cannot speak for Bridgend, but of the twelve I just mentioned earlier on ten are adults and two are young people. So I think it is a misconception really that anti-social behaviour is linked always to young people; it is a balance. Q464 Dr Francis: Yes. If I could address this question to you, Chief Superintendent. In your written evidence you cite several examples of a problem-orientated approach to community policing. Is your approach to anti-social behaviour based on sustainable, semi-permanent problem-solving approaches or on targeting individuals, in other words a short-term solution, and can you give us some examples? Mr Greaves: I think what we have done in Rhondda Cynon Taff is we have reorganised just over twelve months ago and we are seeing a reduction in crime and a reduction in incidence, and in consequence we have been able to slightly reduce the number of police officers that we have got to respond to incidents. That has allowed us to create community structures in each of our sectors. I do not want to go into too much detail, but in each of our sectors now we have got six uniformed PCs and a sergeant and they actually perform the community structure to policing within that sector. What I have done is they are red circled. We say they are red circled so they do not get abstracted to do other things, so they actually remain providing a slow time policing service (as we describe it) and giving that support to the communities. That has been supplemented also by Police Community Support Officers and I am pleased to say in Rhondda Cynon Taff we have got a larger percentage of PCSOs because the local authority has actually invested into that with us as well. So we are able to give a much stronger community presence and what we encourage our officers to do is to become sort of beat managers. They actually act as a fulcrum for community and partnership work and trying to draw in also our special constabulary and other volunteers to give a service within the communities. I think this is the way the Government would like us to progress in any event, with the increase of Community Support Officers. With that we also employ full-time one of our PCs actually is our ASBO coordinator and what we are looking to do within the county as well is to provide a twenty-four hour hotline for anti-social behaviour so that people can ring in as well. So what we do then obviously is when we are getting complaints we are looking at what the problems are and trying to resolve those problems through a problem orientated approach. So it is actually about designing an effective resolution to it, not sort of sticking the plaster over the problem for a week or so and then actually finding that it actually occurs somewhere else or we just displace it. So it is about looking long-term at the problems and in the process we are trying to train our community beat officers to give them the skills to be able to look at problem-solving initiatives and even, for example, filling in applications for finance from the Lottery Commission, for example, of something like that in order to resolve some of these local problems. So it is far more structured in a problem-orientated approach as opposed to a short-term approach. Q465 Dr Francis: Could I finish by asking you a rather strange question. I do not know whether you have seen in today's Times there is a report of a pig farmer in Norfolk who faces the possibility of a prison sentence as a result of a breach of an anti-social behaviour order after his pigs escaped on to a neighbouring property for a second time, therefore breaching the terms of the ASBO. Do you think this is the type of anti-social behaviour the legislation was intended to address? Mr Greaves: I think it probably is. Thinking on my feet here, there probably is some form of legislation for not properly controlling your animals. I cannot put my finger on the pulse of what that exactly is at the moment, but I think the secret with the Anti-social Behaviour Act was that it was sort of to deal with those things that perhaps were not obvious, that there was not necessarily legislation to deal with. Whilst it might seem a bit extreme that a farmer allowing his pigs to escape from the land could end up with five years imprisonment, I think the report suggested, at the end of the day for it to have got to the position of an ASBO being applied in respect of this particular farmer I should imagine his regard to public safety, his regard to his role or responsibility in the community has been such that he is almost just being arrogant and has probably foregone any sort of logic in terms of the way he should behave. Reading the article, it seemed to me that obviously they have had probably months (or probably maybe even longer than that) of problems with this particular farmer. So I am sure it was fully appropriate for an ASBO to be put in place and of course if he has breached that now then I suspect the law should punish him. I doubt if he will get five years' imprisonment, but I should imagine that they should actually give him some substantial penalty in order to make an example. So I think it is and, as I said earlier on if legislation exists to deal with the problem, for example if somebody commits criminal damage we have got powers to arrest them for criminal damage and to charge them for criminal damage. In this area I think it is less clear what the legislation is. So I would say yes, it is probably an appropriate use of the legislation. Q466 Dr Francis: Do you think that there is a lack of a formal definition of anti-social behaviour? Mr Greaves: I think there probably is because it is lots of things to lots of people and I think Mr Lewis mentioned earlier on about tolerance. It is quite interesting. We had one example in Rhondda Cynon Taff where we had a couple of youngsters who were standing on the street corner just chatting and generally doing things that young people do and an elderly man approached them and started berating them about hanging around on the street corners and started using extreme language and became very threatening. Now, if you like, that is in reverse basically. He was the one committing anti-social behaviour, not the children on the street corner. So it is very much about interpretation, about tolerance, what people are expected to do. It is amazing to me because some communities, probably the worst off communities, the more deprived communities, have got a much, much higher tolerance than those communities where there is a greater level of wealth and sustenance. It just seems to me that in some of those areas people have perhaps got a very, very low tolerance for children hanging around on street corners, or doing anything in fact They just want to remain in their little houses or boats and the do not want any interference whatsoever. There is a balance somewhere. I am not quite certain what the definition is, but it probably does need to be more defined, yes. Q467 Dr Francis: Thank you for that answer because the tone of the question really rather a loaded one, is it not? It implies certain things, does it not? You assume that anti-social behaviour is amongst young people in cities and in fact it applies generally and the broader the definition the better, I guess? Mr Greaves: Yes. Dr Francis: Thank you. Q468 Mrs Williams: I would just like to make a comment really about the issue of the pig. I used to work for a magistrates' clerk years ago and I used to type summonses out and livestock should not be straying on to the public highway and in those days they used to fine the farmer five shillings a head for however many sheep were straying on to the highway. Chairman, that is just a bit of information. Mr Greaves: Thank you for that. Q469 Mrs Williams: That used to happen in North Wales anyway, I do not know about South Wales, but it was the law of the land and still is. What are your views about dispersal orders? They are starting to be used now. One was used in my constituency recently and it has proved to be quite successful and the local people are saying because it is successful they would like the period to be extended. Mr Greaves: I think it is all about proportionality and I think the punishment, if you like, needs to fit the crime. So you need to look at the problem you have got. As I have alluded to earlier, there is a whole range of tools in the tool box that we as a police service have in order to deliver the service that we do and to keep crime and disorder, well, not at appropriate levels, as low as we possibly can. All I would say is you need to look at the problem you have got, you need to look at what resources and what legislation we have got to deal with it and if the problem is that excessive perhaps we do need dispersal orders. But I think we have got to be very careful. There is a balance here. We police by consent in this country. We need the support of all the community. We certainly do not need to alienate ourselves with the young people of the country because the dispersal order tends to be directed more towards the young and at the end of the day we have all grown up at different stages, perhaps, and we have all used the streets, we have all got together. It is the way that we are and I am not sure that if we take the youngsters off the street who are just generally socialising and gathering that we are necessarily giving the right message. But the other end of that spectrum is where there is considerable disorder and general fear in a neighbourhood then it might be an appropriate tool, but I think it is about proportionality and about understanding the problem and applying the right level of commitment to it. Mr Lewis: I focus on the word "proportionality". I think that is key and we are all exercised, I think, by different circumstances within each of our localities. I mentioned earlier the concerns of Bridgend concerning the night time economy issues. Now, I am not saying the dispersal orders are appropriate for that sort of problem, but what I am saying is, as we said earlier, there are various remedies in the toolkit and we must be prepared to use them and if dispersal in my judgment is necessary then it should be used, but proportionality is the word which has been used and I would focus on that. Mrs Williams: Thank you. Q470 Mr Williams: Perhaps I could just refer back to the pig question again, not in great detail but it is because both you gentlemen represent what would be thought of as very urban areas. The question really is, do Community Safety Partnerships have a role to play? I know you have rural parts of your areas as well, but do they have a role to play in rural areas or in predominantly rural areas as well? Mr Greaves: I think they have. I think, again, it is just understanding what the issues are in those areas. We were talking about neighbourhood policing units and community structures further down into the ward areas, but all our areas are actually made up of lots of different types of areas where you have got high levels of deprivation and in some you have no areas of deprivation at all. I think it is about providing the right match to the problem. What might be a problem for a rural area obviously would not be a problem for an urban ward. What I would say is that there would be a community beat officer and a community team in a rural area and they would actually get together and consult with the population and look at what the problems are, and the pig example might be a classic example of where one farmer is causing mayhem and madness to that community and we need to respond to it, as we would to maybe the youths who are hanging around the shopping complexes basically terrorising shoppers. So it is about proportionality, again, and having the right response for the right problem. Mr Lewis: Yes. I think my response to that would be that I think you can take comfort from the fact that the bottom up approach takes the whole community with it, be it rural, urban, quasi, whatever, and because the crime audit is conducted on a ward basis then we have rural wards in the urban wards. So that does bring up from the bottom the concerns of rural residents within that process and then it has a reflection within the strategy itself as a consequence. If one also runs alongside that issues about elected representation, clearly speaking in my own area I have nineteen town community council members and fifty-four county borough council members and community safety is an issue which is shared with them so that they have an input basically and an influence from rural representation and urban representation in actually bringing forward areas that they are concerned about. In my own authority crime and disorder has been offered as a scrutiny issue, so my elected members have been scrutinising the works of Safer Bridgend in a very searching way and that, I think, has added value to the process because some of the questions that have been asked this afternoon have been asked of me in a different place. So I think it does show that that engagement that I have referred to throughout what I have said this afternoon is a vitality in bringing up those interests and having them captured within a process. Q471 Mr Williams: Thank you. You both have responsibility for areas which have Communities First wards within them. Perhaps you could tell us something about how the Communities First policing teams work in your areas and how this is different to the ways in which the areas were previously policed. Mr Greaves: If I could just speak for Rhondda Cynon Taff, I have established three Communities First teams and I think the general principle of it is that we have looked at the worst wards, perhaps that is a bad phraseology, but the wards which are most deprived and where there is a clear indication that that deprivation is probably leading to high levels of crime and disorder. What we have done is we have actually allocated a Communities First team there to work alongside the Communities First structure that exists in that particular ward area and it is just a simple concept really. If I can just give an example, I spoke earlier on about six community beat officers and a sergeant in each sector. That would probably mean that each community beat officer probably has responsibility for two wards, which might be anything up to about 8,000 population. So that is the sort of level of commitment. What we would be doing with Communities First is actually putting four PCs and a sergeant into one ward area, which would be (and I am generalising here) around about a population of 4,000. Now, it is a slow time approach, it is a problem-orientated approach that we talked about earlier on, and what you have there is almost saturated - well, I say saturated but it might not seem that saturated, but to have four dedicated police officers and a sergeant working in one small defined area is a change from what we have been able to do because a lot of our policing is response policing. The communities do not generally see police officers walking around their streets. We do not have enough really to do that. But in the Communities First areas we are able to do that and we are able to give a far greater level of commitment in terms of police presence and police response. Q472 Mr Williams: Has that been successful? Mr Greaves: It has been extremely successful. I cannot actually dictate to you the statistical changes, but I can say that areas have seen things like a 50% reduction in reported crime and significant reductions in incidents that have happened where these teams have been placed. Tylorstown was the first team in Rhondda Cynon Taff. The second two teams were only put into place just last March, so we have not quite seen the benefits of that yet but there is already evidence that it is making a huge difference. Q473 Mr Williams: You have that in your area as well, have you? Mr Lewis: Yes, indeed. Rhondda Cynon Taff have a higher concentration of Communities First wards than Bridgend, we have four in Bridgend, but similarly to Rhondda Cynon Taff we have concentrated through community policing and Communities First policing opening up a police presence actually in the primary school in one of the Communities First wards, which is important because the counselling issue then comes out as a nucleus from there and surprisingly the four wards are closely related. The only point I would want to make, and I am not in any way denigrating the importance of Communities First policing, but in Bridgend's case if one looks at the crime audit I have one Communities First ward which does show high levels of concern in relation to offending and crime and disorder issues, but I have concerns elsewhere in the county borough which do not fall within Communities First wards and I think that point does need to be made because whilst there is an issue which needs to be engaged on Communities First policing it is about the application of resources across the piece and frankly I think if one were to speak to the local residents of the County Borough of Bridgend then I think they could refer to issues of concern which are not Communities First driven but which are very close to them. So I think again it is the balance issue. Q474 Mrs Williams: You have just mentioned what residents are saying. Are they asking questions in your police force area? Do they feel that the headquarters is sort of sucking in additional resources for specialised studies, if you like, within HQ rather than seeing the officers on the streets of the towns? Mr Greaves: I think that might be an issue which is more internal to the police than the public themselves because I doubt if they would be thinking too much about what is happening in headquarters. If I could just speak for the South Wales Police, we try our very best to put as many police officers on to the front line as we possibly can. There is this sort of myth really that people are walking around headquarters with nothing to do. That is certainly not the case. If officers are in headquarters they are there for a specific purpose. There are different things which need to be done. A division would not manage on its own without the support of headquarters, for example things like fire arms, air support, traffic and all the rest of it comes from headquarters' responding units. So I think there is bit of a myth there that headquarters is a sort of a luxury place where real policemen are not located. As a force we try and put as many as we can on the front line. If I could just go back to the Communities First point, in Tylorstown there was always, probably back as far as the miners' dispute in 1984 a bit of tension between the police and the community, which was a very sort of traditional miners' village. But just recently, about a year or so ago, we had a tragic double murder in Tylorstown and the Communities First team there were asked to act as coffin bearers for the family and I think that just speaks volumes for the difference that that has made in the communities in South Wales where we have been able to concentrate this extra policing, and this confidence has come back into the community and the spirit, which is what policing really is all about. Q475 Mr Williams: When do you think you will be able to fully evaluate the effectiveness of Communities First policing, in particular the concentration of resources in a particular area? Mr Greaves: The force is about to embark on an independent audit, another review of the Communities First teams. I do take on board what Mr Lewis says but, as I say, in Rhondda Cynon Taff I think we have got twenty-two Communities First areas in seventeen wards and what we have done is we have tried to put our Communities First teams into those areas that are not just identified as having levels of deprivation but also they are linked to crime and disorder. So we have actually put our teams into what we can perceive to be our highest priority areas. This is alongside all the other services that we give as well, so it is not instead of. So they still have reactive patrols covering those areas. They will still have, for example, traffic patrols in those areas, but this is a dedicated team, a slow-time team which can look at the problems in those areas and work with other partners to try and improve them. So it is making some impact. Q476 Mr Williams: This next question is about the Integrated Community Safety Service to enable the Rhondda Cynon Taff Community Safety Partnership achieve what other partnerships do not achieve. Mr Greaves: Well, I think what we have done is we have managed to find a unit and we have actually leased a unit where we have many of our partners working together. The biggest failure, I think, really is that no sooner had we actually moved in there we realised it could have been much bigger and we have other partners who wish to come and join us, or other parts of the whole structure which could perhaps best fit into this unit. But it has brought us together. It does enable us to problem-solve more effectively. One of the big problems with the partnership is that each organisation has its own data collection systems, computers and different things, and they do not speak to one another, there is no compatibility with the data. Of course what we have got at Fairway Court now is all our different computer systems actually linking in to the unit, so whilst we might not have access to all the different systems it is only just down the corridor to find out a little bit about something you might need to know when you are problem-solving an issue. Q477 Mr Williams: Are there any problems with the co-location? Mr Greaves: Not that we have actually experienced just yet. As I say, one of the greatest problems is the fact that we are getting greater demand for more people to come there and that in its own right is causing an issue but that has been tremendously successful. Q478 Mr Williams: Are there any problems associated with police managing non-police staff? Mr Greaves: No. I think it has been done very gently and by learning as we go along. I have got a chief inspector working there who is very sensitive to all those issues and very qualified, so we have had a very, very smooth introduction and integration of all the different units working together there, but again it comes down to personalities, tolerance and flexibility in the way that we work. Q479 Mr Williams: Are external agencies compensated for staff secondment? How does that work? Mr Greaves: Not through the partnership, no. They are actually contributing in that respect and they are actually contributing towards the cost of the unit as well. Q480 Mr Williams: Perhaps you could tell us a little more about the Safety Zone and the activities which go on there? Mr Greaves: Well, the Safety Zone is something which was created about five or six years ago really and the basic concept is that it is a huge warehouse which has been configured with all different elements of everyday society - a shop, a pub, a level crossing and a whole range of other set pieces within the unit. Basically, school s are encouraged to go to the Safety Zone, different groups are encouraged to go there and the team at the Safety Zone work them through different scenarios in order to give them real life experiences of perhaps buying something at the shop and being served in a pub. In the last twelve months over twenty-five thousand children have been through the unit and had a great deal of tuition and instruction on different elements of safety and general social behaviour, and so forth. As I say, it works tremendously and it is very diverse. We can use it in the day and at night, women's safety groups and a whole range of different individuals have come through there and benefited from the structure. Q481 Mrs Williams: Can I turn to funding and sustainability with you. You note several difficulties in terms of the funding of Community Safety Partnerships. Could you tell us a little bit more about the problems and any proposed solutions too, and I would like you to address, if you would, the difficulties in planning given short-term funding cycles which do not coincide with your three year strategies, and also the difficulties which arise around the different conditions and restrictions around grant, especially those that pre-determine capital and revenue spending. Mr Lewis: I will lead on that response. I think I have referred to that in the evidence I have submitted and I think we have covered some of that ground earlier this afternoon. I think my position statement on that is that Community Safety Partnerships currently rely upon diverse funding streams but there is not a sustainability of assurance of longevity about them and therefore long-term planning is inhibited as a consequence. My colleague has referred to the engagement of staff and I think he was absolutely right to do that because the quality of engagement sometimes can vary depending upon the letter of the contract and the attraction of quality candidature for posts and therefore to have short-term funding streams means that you may be in difficulty in recruiting, or at least in retaining quality staff, in key areas of operation. There are also issues, as you rightly refer to, in relation to revenue and capital streams of funding and I have come across that recently in the sense that within my evidence I referred to the need for us to acquire partnership premises and I fully agree with the point that has been made. It provides a far more cohesive working environment. With very diverse colleagues working to the same objectives, to have them based under the same roof does not always work but in this case it does and we have been striving to do that, but effectively I have had to try and find a way of swapping capital monies for revenue monies because I cannot buy, I need to lease, and that is a revenue issue. I have managed to do it for the three year period, which has just got me what I need to. I have a three year lease arrangement, but after that we will have to find other ways of doing it. So I do accept there must be national arrangements and frameworks around the funding streams, particularly on revenue and capital, but perhaps there could be some greater degree of flexibility, particularly on the transposition of those funding streams to meet local needs, which comes back to the point I made earlier this afternoon, local circumstances. Q482 Mrs Williams: Are there difficulties around the different streams of funding which come from both the Home Office and the National Assembly for Wales? Mr Greaves: Well, yes. I think it is getting better. What happened, I think, last year was that a number of different streams of finance were consolidated into the buildings in the communities and what they call the BCU Commander's Fund and I think the National Audit Office is looking at proposals just for one basic allocation of finance for Community Safety Partnerships, which I would support. I am not an expert in financial matters, but I do not really understand why there needs to be a capital revenue split. It seems to me that if we could work out some sort of proportion for each Community Safety Partnership of the bigger pot of finance, if it was as simple as that and we were given it, as I said earlier on, if we were then actually allowed to commit that finance on the basis of what our strategy outlined and our plans and our objectives, and maybe there would be some financial penalties if we did not achieve what we set out to achieve as opposed to forever bidding for finances that sometimes we do not get notification of until the last minute and then we have got to try and spend that money in a short period of time, which is often very difficult. Why not give us the responsibility right at the very start and say, "Well, you get on with it. You've told us what you propose to do. Well, go on and do it," and if we do it, well, fine because we will have achieved our objectives. If we do not, maybe there could be some sort of sanction for us not achieving. I do not know whether there are problems with achieving what I have set out, perhaps it is too simplistic an approach, but it just seems to me to be the way we should do it. Q483 Mrs Williams: In paragraph 5.2 of Rhondda Cynon Taff's written evidence you say there is an "absolute need for the partnership to be supported by an effective administrative infrastructure and appropriate funding" which is identified in your written evidence. What would be the most effective administrative infrastructure, would you say, and most appropriate funding in your view. I know you have expressed your view now when I asked you about the funding of capital. Mr Greaves: I think if we are going to run an effective partnership we need to be able to administer to it and there is a sort of argument, and I support the argument around partnerships that, for example, if you pool in the number of people together from different agencies those people would have needed support from their own agencies in the first instance. But it is very difficult to withdraw little bits of support to actually create a realistic level of support at the partnership. For example, if you go to the Fairway Court system that we have got where we have a number of agencies working together it is very difficult to take a proportion of an admin clerk that might have come from health in order to give support to the people now who work collectively and sometimes there is a little bit of tension about us trying to use partnership monies to employ perhaps an administrative clerk or a finance officer. But at the end of the day if this organisation is going to function effectively it needs to have proper levels of administration. We talked earlier on about performance measurement and performance management. All that type of work requires support, it does not just happen. Meetings need to be minuted. There is a whole range of support which actually is being driven through the partnership itself and sometimes there are many constraints and restrictions on us which do not allow us to use the finances to employ staff, for example. Perhaps the direction would be that it needs to go more into our objectives as opposed to supporting the people who actually helped us to achieve those objectives. Mrs Williams: Thank you. Chairman: Okay, I think that is it. It has been a very long session but very useful. Thank you very much indeed for coming. |