Commissioner's Blog - October 2021 - My first few months

It has been almost five months since I was elected as your Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for the Humberside Police area earlier this year. Since I took office I have been taking stock of all the varied aspects the role of PCC involves and meeting some of the key individuals and organisations involved in community safety across the Humber area. My job is to be your representative in oversight of the police force for the next three years and I will be working hard with my team to get the best service for the public.  As well as holding the Chief Constable of the force to account for the performance of the police, my role goes much wider than that and I have a small team assisting me to make the area safer, reduce crime and commission services to assist those that have been impacted by crime.

My first few months have been very busy preparing my vision for the area in a document called the Police and Crime Plan.  A public consultation was held throughout the summer to gather people’s views and we are now finalising the content. This strategic document sets out to my office, the police force and all strategic partners working to make communities safer what I want to see us collectively achieve.  The plan will be made available to the public and will be published in October.

I have been busy getting out and meeting as many people as possible. Listening to people and their concerns is a key part of my role.  I am not one to be sat behind a desk so you will often find me out and about meeting with community leaders, Councillors and MP’s to understand where issues are being faced and whether or not I have any levers or powers to help create solutions or bring together the right people to work better together. Some of the key areas I have picked up so far are concerns on Anti-Social Behaviour going unreported, lack of confidence in reporting and concerns for the safety of women.  In all of these areas we are looking at how we can find ways in which we can build your confidence in the agencies and systems we have in place that are there to tackle these issues.

My team have been provided some clear objectives, one of which is to increase the ambition for driving more resources into the area.  This will mean we can commission more services for improving the safety of our community.  The team have been working extremely hard and have managed in the time so far to secure over £1m of additional resources to increase police presence in crime hot spots, spend capital monies on new safety initiatives and commission more victim recovery services.  There will be more to come as we continue to press forward with our plans.

We have reviewed how the office provide funding to partner agencies, specifically our relationship with Community Safety Partnerships (CSP’s).  We have committed to invest in CSP’s over the next three years to support better partnership and coordination as well as support projects that will help to deliver the Police and Crime Plan. In addition to that we will be launching a Commissioners Fund to ensure that community and voluntary organisations can be supported with new ideas and projects that can deliver against my plan. I will be advocating for assisting local people to help address their own community issues, for more people to volunteer in community safety projects and providing sustainable solutions to problems.

Another key strand of my plan is to work with addressing the number of young people entering into our criminal justice system and looking at ways to help ensure they have positive pathways, diversion services where appropriate and emphasis on early education through assisting our schools with access to quality resources on topical areas our young people need which will allow them to better understand risks. This will require complex partnership working but it is a challenge my office will take forward.  We have to help people as early as possible not enter the criminal justice system as research tells us once in the system it can be extremely difficult to break that cycle.

There are so many areas of work we are covering, if you are interested in seeing what we are doing and how we are driving improvements then please follow our Facebook page, by searching Humberside Police and Crime Commissioner, our Twitter on @HumbersidePCC and check in on our website www.humberside-pcc.gov.uk for news and updates.  If you are not signed up already you will also find My Community Alert a helpful service.  The alert system provides tailored messaging based on your preferences for community safety in your area.  You can sign up by visiting https://www.mycommunityalert.co.uk/

It’s an honour to be your Police and Crime Commissioner, I will work hard to provide the best for local people across East Yorkshire, Hull and Northern Lincolnshire and I will keep you informed with our progress over my term of office.