Highlights:
Community Safety Partnership, which I help fund, has sound plans for the coming year.
- Shoplifting being tackled
- Anti Social Behaviour in shopping areas decline
- Foot patrols increased
- Leicester Riders becoming involved in work with youngsters
- Stolen vehicles identified & recovered
- Road Safety at School to be tackled
- Anti Social Behaviour in residential areas to be investigated
I began my Community Day in Wigston with a visit to the Borough Council to meet with the Chair and Director of the Community Safety Partnership [CSP]. This body brings together a wide range of organisations – police, social workers, NHS, fire brigade etc – to work together to keep our communities safer. Each council area has its own, so this one covers Oadby and Wigston.
My visit began with a tour of the new Council offices at Brocks Hill. They are certainly impressive, though we must wait to see how effective the living moss on the walls will prove to be at regulating the humidity of the air.
Cllr Kevin Loydell, Marks Smith and I discussed the plans of the CSP to tackle knife crime, e-scooters and other dangers. I was pleased to see the CSP slogan “Engage, Equip, Educate” is going to be put into practice. My office will be working closely with the CSP to help support their work.
I was then off to Wigston Police Station to meet with the beat officers for Wigston. They started by briefing me on their work. I was please to hear that the number and duration of foot patrols was being increased. This both helped to deter crime and reassured local residents and businesses.
The success of this was already evident. The day after my visit a number of local teenagers were due to visit the police. “We would much rather not criminalise these youngsters,” I was told. “Once you do that it blights their future. So we try a number of different tactics such as Acceptable Behaviour Contracts to encourage them to take themselves out of problematic behaviour. But of course, enforcement is always there as a last resort if it is needed.”
Then we were off out on one of the foot patrols. We began by ducking into a network of alleys. “These are all over Wigston,” I was told. We emerged into Bell Street. The officers were clearly well known. They stopped to chat with shoppers and shopworkers alike.
One manager was concerned about a young man who had been acting suspiciously. “He seems to have gone now,” she said. Had anything been stolen? “Not that I can see, but he was acting very oddly.”
A shopper took the opportunity to report a car dumped in his street. The beat officer promised to drop by later that day to have a look.
Round the corner into Junction Road and we came across dumped furniture. Fly tipping can be a problem here. The council was called to alert them to the mess.
I left the two officers to their work and headed off to meet Cllr Rupa Joshi in Copse Close. She was concerned about road safety outside the school there. I could see what she meant, as we were chatting a car sped round the corner at a hair-raising speed. Cllr Joshi nodded. “Speed is the key problem here. But also some parents will park badly when dropping off their children. That adds to the problems.”
We discussed action being taken by the school and council to make the corner safer – and ways in which the police might be able to help.
Then I was off to Windlass Drive and the nearby open spaces around the canal. Cllr Liz Darling had reported anti-social behaviour here to me. The area was quiet enough when I visited, though there was litter and discarded bottlers that could indicate unpleasant behaviour at other times.
Beforehand I had advertised my visit on social media. The following problems had been highlighted to me:
- Parking on the pavements of Estoril Avenue
- Speeding vehicles on Stoughton Road
- Parking and speeding on Launceston Road
- Shoplifting in Bell Street and Leicester Road
- Theft of and from cars in Wigston Magna.
I will be following all these up and reporting back to those who had reported them to me.
