Agenda item

Neighbourhood Watch was a grassroots charitable movement. It was the largest crime prevention voluntary movement in England and Wales and had upwards of 2.3 million members. Schemes were run by volunteers across England and Wales supported by volunteer Associations, and by Neighbourhood Watch Network, which was the national umbrella organisation for the movement.

Surrey Heath Neighbourhood Watch (SHNW) volunteers supported Surrey Heath beat to reduce crime and make Surrey Heath a safer place to live and work. A borough wide support group coordinated activity and disseminated information to each road/watch.

Watches regularly shared information, promoted good citizenship and aimed to encourage greater public participation to prevent crime and anti-social behaviour. The watch aimed to actively raise awareness of crime and crime patterns, such as cybercrime, text and telephone based scams as well as physical crimes such as burglary and anti-social behaviour.

During the pandemic Neighbourhood watch reconfigured its services to hold its watch meetings via Zoom, supported its watch coordinators by the phone, and joined the COVID champions scheme and distributed weekly updates and created an electronic newsletter.

Despite the pandemic, within the last year SHNW updated and refurbished all NHW street signs to a more contemporary design. Additional funds to support vulnerable people were raised in order to support vulnerable people by enhancing their home security via provisions such as new locks, alarms and CCTV. SHNW had also worked in greater partnership with Crimestoppers and had successfully applied to Your Fund Surrey for the funding of a Community Support Vehicle.

SHNW had worked in close partnership to support Surrey Police on a number of initiatives. SHNW had supported the Police and Crimestoppers with a catalytic converter theft awareness campaign at Longacres and had worked with PCSOs to set up new neighbourhood watches in high crime areas.

SHNW funded its activities from a significant grant from the Safer Surrey Heath Partnership and smaller grants from the fund of the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner and other bodies such as Windlesham Parish Council. Furthermore SHNW raised some of funds from the sale of home security devices from the stalls at which it attended.

Arising from Members’ questions and comments the following points were noted:

·         There was an opportunity for SHNW to make use of Duke of Edinburgh Award participants in respect of volunteer activities.

·         Members could opt to use their Surrey County Council Members’ Community Allocation or Borough Ward Councillor community fund grant scheme funds to fund the activities of their local watches.

·         Keyless entry car manufacturers were slowly transitioning to fobs which went into a sleep mode when placed down. However it was emphasised that there were multiple methods of entry, including key cloning which could have taken place before second-hand cars were bought.

·         There was an opportunity for the Council and Ward Councillors to highlight the dangers of keyless car theft via their various social media channels.