Partnership working gets better and better

Kate Firman from the Safer Peterborough Partnership

Ihave mentioned previously in my articles on Euro 2016 and hate crime about the challenges Peterborough faces arising from our socio-economic conditions, rapid population growth and an increasingly diverse community. These factors, combined with the ongoing reductions in funding across the public sector, provide significant challenges in continuing to keep all members of our community safe and reducing crime. Transforming the way the public sector delivers services is a critical part of keeping Peterborough safe.

The creation of the Prevention and Enforcement Service (PES) is an innovative model that combines staff from Peterborough City Council, Cambridgeshire Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Service and HMP Peterborough into a single service tackling crime and quality of life issues. The PES is an evolution of the existing CSP (Safer Peterborough Partnership – SPP). The SPP has existed for a number of years as a partnership body – services have historically been stand-alone but working in collaboration on joint initiatives.

In November 2015 the Police Superintendent for Peterborough restructured the approach to delivering services in the city and moved existing Neighbourhood Police Teams into the Safer Peterborough Partnership. With a strong and thriving partnership already in place, coupled with an understanding of the financial and political imperative to improve the joint working of agencies and increase public value, the concept of the PES was born. At its heart was a need to work collectively with agencies to understand joint demands, work effectively to both deal with and reduce crime and ASB and provide a value for money service with efficiency at its heart.

From this month we are moving closer to our vision as the PES will be delivered through a shared management structure which sees leadership from across the organisations embedded throughout the service moving to a single service rather than a collection of teams from different organisations. Teams will comprise of a blend of staff with their own specialism and experience, supervised by a mixture of police, council, prison and fire service managers.

The service will be jointlyled by a Chief Inspector and Chief Fire Officer. They will report in to a PES executive board consisting of the council’s Director for Adult Service and Communities, the Lead Fire Officer for Community Safety and the Divisional Commander for Policing in Peterborough.

The front facing delivery teams will be divided geographically into northern, southern and eastern sectors. I am managing the eastern team, Inspector Kieran Mylchreest will be managing the northern team and Graeme Clark the southern team. Each of us have a great mix of staff who specialise in policing, parking issues, flytipping, housing and ASB and will be providing our communities with PCSO points of contact to better improve our links with them.