A mixed response from councillors to a new community safety strategy for Central Bedfordshire highlights unease among local communities, a meeting heard.
The Central Bedfordshire Community Safety Partnership published the 2024 to 2027 community safety strategy in April.
The partnership includes Central Bedfordshire Council, Bedfordshire Police, Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service, BLMK Integrated Care Board and Bedfordshire Probation Service.
Recommendations from this strategic assessment will be collated into a partnership action plan, according to a report to a Central Bedfordshire Council.
The actions will be owned by sub-groups, which sit under the community safety partnership executive, explained the report.
“The new strategy was signed off by the partnership executive in January, having considered feedback from residents in the ‘safer central’ survey,” said Independent Leighton Linslade West councillor, Steve Owen.
“This strategy sits alongside the work being done by the council’s police and crime panel. That includes a reach out to all Central Bedfordshire councillors, and town and parish councils locally to gain knowledge of the key community safety and policing issues.
“The panel will be well placed to understand how the Chief Constable’s and Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner’s priorities respond to the issues being flagged upwards by our communities and by ourselves.”
Councillors from different political parties were critical of the strategy’s limitations.
Central Bedfordshire Council’s executive member for children’s services, councillor Owen replied: “I quite welcome this mixed response the report received because it reflects the concerns and unease among our residents around community safety.
“I hope we get more information about that from those survey responses to our police and crime panel, so I’m not dismayed by the negative noises being made.
“Using this report to be critical won’t change anything. What will change things is if members attend that panel to table their concerns and get them discussed.
“They can use the constitution to bring items on to the sustainable communities overview and scrutiny committee agenda. People should do that more.”
‘Cuckooing’ targeted
Three priorities of the strategy are identifying and disrupting cuckooing, tackling flytipping and the statutory serious violence duty.
Cuckooing is where criminals or gangs target and take over the homes of vulnerable adults to use their property for their own criminal activities, added the report.
“This may include dealing, storing, or taking drugs, sex work, somewhere to live, financial abuse and storing weapons.
“Victims can be exposed to other forms of abuse such as modern slavery and trafficking, physical harm neglect, and psychological, emotional or sexual abuse.
“There were 99 cases of cuckooing referred to Central Bedfordshire Council during a recent three-year period, with numbers increasing each year.”
The statutory duty requires specific organisations for local government areas to plan to prevent and reduce serious violence, including identifying the causes of the violence, said the report.
“Almost a third of all reported crimes in Central Bedfordshire in 2022 were violent or sexual offences. A seven per cent increase in violent crimes has been recorded during the last three years.
“Levels of violence have remained stable in Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard, but increased in Houghton Regis, Biggleswade and Stotfold.”
There were 6,845 fly tips reported to Central Bedfordshire Council between April 2020 and January 2022.
by Euan Duncan
Local Democracy Reporter
