Community Safety Expo 24 hears partnership work key to getting crime down
Partnership work leads to success in getting crime down – the key message from the PFCC Essex’s Community Safety Expo 24 held on 1st March.

The Expo, at Boreham House, near Chelmsford, was attended by more than 250 representatives of community safety partners, including Essex Police, Essex County Fire and Rescue Service, the Violence and Vulnerability Unit (VVU), charities, community groups and council partners.

Roger Hirst, Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner for Essex, told the Expo: “Partnership working is key to our approach – our approach has always been to achieve results with organisations and agencies working with each other.

“We are going to do more of what works. Our success shows we know the things that work and we are going to more of them.”

Among the guests and speakers alongside the PFCC were Anna Firth, MP for Southend West, Chief Constable BJ Harrington of Essex Police, Chief Fire Officer Rick Hylton of Essex County Fire and Rescue Service and Jane Gardner, Deputy PFCC.

Also speaking were knife crime campaigners Quinton Green and Julie Taylor, who spoke of the ongoing need to halt knife crime in our communities.

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PFCC Essex, MP and Council Leader visit Thurrock to see benefits of anti-social behaviour hotspot funding
Last week Roger Hirst joined Dame Jackie Doyle-Price MP to view the impact anti-social behaviour hotspot funding has had on Lakeside shopping centre and Chafford Hundred Station.

In July last year the PFCC was able to invest an extra £1.1m in high-visibility patrols and targeted intervention to tackle anti-social behaviour (ASB) in 11 hotspots across Essex, later expanded to 13.

The area of Thurrock surrounding the Lakeside shopping centre and Chafford Hundred Station was one of 13 identified hotspots in Essex to receive a share of this funding.

The very latest year-on-year figures to the end of January show anti-social behaviour incidents in Thurrock district have decreased by 32%.

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PFCC targets £300K investment to create safer roads in Essex
The Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner for Essex is targeting investment in extra road crime hotspot policing in the county, after a similar approach has proved successful in driving down anti-social behaviour.

Following the success achieved in the past year by investment in targeted anti-social behaviour policing, the PFCC has allocated £300,000 of Local Safer Streets Funding which will be spent on extra road traffic patrols, traffic crime monitoring and community speedwatch at identified road crime hotspots.

Over the past year to the end of January anti-social behaviour incidents in Essex have decreased by 38.5% and the new targeted investment from the PFCC is hoping to achieve a similar significant drop in speeding incidents and road traffic accidents.

Roger Hirst, Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, said: “We’re going to more of what works. Targeted investment to bring down anti-social behaviour has worked, now we are targeting investment to bring down road crime.

“In public meetings and the PFCC Rural Crime Forum, the public tell me that speeding in rural areas is a major crime concern. This investment will now target that rural crime with extra police patrols and extra police and community speed camera patrols.”

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