Southend Business Against Crime Meeting - May 23

Many thanks to those attended the Business Against Crime meeting.

Minutes and Actions from the last meeting

• Police - meeting with college and university to be arranged

• Rangers – daily routine, proactively visit around lunch to help prevent incidents, to be scheduled

• Playground – sweep in the morning for any incidents, to action when open

Southend City BID Crime and Safety Updates

• Street Ranger stats for March - May (to date): Visitor enquiries - 994, Business crime incidents - 276, Unlicensed events / buskers - 11, Rough sleeper engagement / begging incidents - 166, Anti-social behaviour - 233, First Aid - 7.

• Question as to what trend we are seeing – ASB and rough sleeping/begging engagements rising, which CS commented that they are also seeing. One reason for the rise in rough sleepers as more faces from out of town and not as many being put in bnbs.

• As of 1st June there will be back to four full time Street Rangers consisting of Andrew, Lewis, Sharna and Kyle.

• Month to date the team have helped to successfully recover £3,746 in stolen goods.

• Working with the business crime team to highlight top offenders in the zone so more work can be done to establish Criminal Behaviour Orders against them.

• DISC – term two BID members that have not continued into term three will now need to pay to have access to DISC from June.

• Crime Deterrent Solution – meeting with top five businesses within next two weeks to understand feasibility.

• Hate Crime Ambassadors – anyone like to attend or have staff members train to become one? ACTION

Southend Police Team Update

• Op Union - 10 on late and 10 on early as part of this which means town centre police team can fully focus on the High Street zone as more officers on duty each day.

• Op community – forces to focus on one topic for concentrated activity on that day, carried out Essex wide. 25th May the focus will again be on e-scooters/bikes on High Street due to success of event last month with the new PSPO in place.

• Op grip – when officers are positioned in a specific area then crimes don’t happen there. This is a force wide activity now and extra funding is provided to target hot spots. Taking place in Southend in areas such as Warrior Square which guarantees patrols every day in the zones.

• Demonstrations – 4th June outside Odeon about the two dogs that were shot.

• Question regards to bank holiday / pay day weekend – yes more officers on as part of Op Union.

Police Business Crime Team Update

• CBOs – priority to get these as business as usual every day with the business crime team taking the lead on the applications. Recent success is the top ten offenders for the Hamlet Court Road area have all received CBOs and/or prosecutions in the last six months.

• Comments given of the good work being done here.

• Running several activities including targeted against alcohol asb, ‘just here to train’ and ‘Open for Business, Closed for Crime’ relaunch with planned retail visits

• Comment made to get in touch for connections to local gyms to work on this ‘just here to train’ campaign. ACTION

• Safer Action Business Days – police, businesses and safety partnerships on targeted activity with everyone working together.

• Comment raised that hospital runs a yellow/red card system with those who are abusive to staff, could connect with this team if CBOs are looking to be raised as likely the same faces.

Community Safety Updates

• Business as usual, currently have 7 out of 8 full time staff members and will be moving to Summer hours (shifts until 10pm) from 1st June until September.

• PSPO cycling/scooter went up end of March, engagement day and fines issues.

• 20 Fixed Penalty Notices since March for various matters, handful paid and the rest are under prosecutions. Hopefully more fines issued and followed up with more prosecutions will start to see ASB activity reduce as there are consequences.

• Issued raised about youths climbing on the very top roofs with access through Leather Lane. Real concern for their safety. Comments around sharing imagery with CS if they have it ACTION and investigating who owns the ladders, try to contact to put a better safety provision on ACTION.

• Issue raised about ASB activity starting to rise again with better weather and half term and another comment that seconding that with issues rising in the early evening.

AOB

• Person 1: skills/skuls lots of graffiti happening, ACTION to notify when this occurs so CCTV footage could be reviewed and to help identify individual

• Person 2: last week new drug dealers coming out to the plaza by college, ACTION for police to organise some servator activity in the zone with CS and BID joining to really shout about the presence of security services. Comment made that really happy with the use of the opengate and would welcome it’s use more around the college.

• Person 3: just having the police vehicle there on busy days makes such a big difference to perceptions and is a deterrent.

• Person 4: comments around control room, really great coverage and working well to protect the city.

• Question raised to group around day time or evening meetings going forward – question to be raised to regular attendees via email. Discussions of alternating between both. ACTION

Next meeting: Wednesday 26th July. Email Hello@SouthendBID.com to attend or provide feedback.