Safer Croydon Partnership update – December 2023

Cllr Ola Kolade – Follow at @MrOlaKolade on Twitter

Cllr Ola Kolade, Cabinet Member for Community Safety & Safer Croydon Partnership Chair, (pictured left), writes,

“Police Update

• The police and key partners delivered Operation Zerzura in the town centre on Thursday 23 & Friday 24 November led by Broad Green’s Sergeant Zoe Rowbotham. The operation was focused on enforcement and resulted in 19 arrests of individuals wanted for serious crimes and drug offences. 
• Croydon Police ran two successful ‘Live facial recognition’ operations in December, these led to a significant number of arrests with some people wanted for some very serious matters, including a fugitive on the run since 2015. 
• The police are responding to a spate of street robberies of young people, particularly in the South Croydon and Purley area. Extra resources and patrols have been deployed on weekday mornings and afternoons which have led to recent arrests of suspects. Chris Philp MP has offered his support through his role as Policing Minister. 
• Recruitment for the uplift of Sergeants in Croydon have now been completed with placements beginning in December.

Tackling Violence Against Women & Girls (VAWG)

• Violence against women and girls continues to be a key priority for the partnership and we are committed to tackling VAWG across the whole borough for those who live, work, and learn here. We will be implementing the borough’s first ever VAWG strategy in 2024 which will seek to improve efficiencies in our service provision, reduce repeat victimisation, reduce levels of high-risk cases, improve partnership working and increase awareness of this critical issue. 
• The Family Justice Service is a centrally located resource offering a multi-disciplinary approach to services for victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence and their children. The centre seeks to offer victims wrap-around support and to prevent individuals having to go from agency to agency, telling their story repeatedly, in order to access the support, they need. The FJS also lead on the statutory requirement of commissioning domestic violence homicide reviews (DHRs). The team lead on the coordination of Modern-Day Slavery (MDS) that involve adults. 
• The council have adopted the Women’s Night Safety Charter and strongly encourage local businesses to join. To mark White Ribbon Day, from 25 November 2023, we started 16 days of action to raise awareness among council staff about domestic abuse and violence against women. From Tuesday 28 November 2023, Croydon Central Library became a designated safe space for people affected by domestic abuse. Posters are placed around the library signposting residents to available support and staff have been trained to support women seeking help.

Improving Youth Safety

• Croydon is home to 94,000 under-18s more than anywhere else in London and the safety and wellbeing of our young people is an absolute priority for the council and its partners. Working in partnership with the community, voluntary sector and young people we have co-created a youth safety plan which was approved by Cabinet in October 2023, the plan focuses on four key themes: Prevention of young people being made vulnerable, Intervention to support currently vulnerable young people, Disruption of gangs and the criminal elements exploiting young people, Diversion and providing positive offers for young people in the borough. 
• Through these themes, our objectives are to: Decrease the number of young people getting injured on Croydon’s streets, Decrease the number of first-time entrants into the Youth Justice System, increase how safe young people feel in the borough. 
• This plan will enable us to co-deliver and improve partnership working across the borough, in addition to securing resources for a longer-term focus on what’s working and making the most impact.

Tackling Crime Hotspots 

• The Partnership uses data and intelligence to identify the key issues facing the borough and then commits resources to tackle those issues. The strategic assessment is the statutory data product that underpins all strategic decision making by the SCP for the next 12 months. Through data from the 2022 strategic assessment, the partnership identified three hotspots to focus and divert resources to. These locations are Croydon Town Centre, Thornton Heath, New Addington.

• Our localities approach seeks to work with established community forums and business partnerships in these locations such as the My End forum, Renew Addington, Croydon BID and other organisations. We allocated specific outreach funding in these areas throughout Summer 2023 and plan to build on a long-term model for this. We implemented a Town Centre Public Safety Protection Order (PSPO), a Thornton Heath PSPO has been approved by Cabinet and will go live early 2024.

• In November, the Council was successful in its bid for £165,000 from the Home Office Safer Streets Funding which will support our efforts in tackling youth violence and VAWG in the Town Centre. The bidding process for this funding will be open early 2024 and we will hold a virtual community briefing on this funding in the new year.

Working in Partnership case studies

• New Addington: With the additional funding into New Addington, Playplace deepened their engagement with local schools in the area, particularly Meridian High. Through the summer, they worked with the local policing team and other partners such as Palace 4 Life, New Addington Pathfinders, and the council’s Youth Engagement team. They increased their youth provision and outreach work, engaging with over 50 young people each week, signposting young people to relevant support services.

• Thornton Heath: Gloves Not Guns were commissioned to deliver outreach sessions in Thornton Heath in Summer 2023. They delivered 32 outreach sessions, coordinating with the local gangs’ team, safer neighbourhood team and youth engagement team to align their services and share intelligence. They offered a mixture of outreach sessions and mentoring sessions to engage young people at serious risk of exploitation and the team noticed a drop in serious incidents over the period of June to September.

• Town Centre: Between May 2023 and October 2023, Project 4 Youth Empowerment delivered 84 sessions throughout the summer. 80 afternoon sessions and 4 morning sessions. They coordinated with school officers, police officers, the council’s youth engagement team, the Saffron Valley Taskforce to share information and intelligence. This joint working has resulted in prevention of serious incidents and offering mentoring opportunities to young people.”