UTTLESFORD DISTRICT NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH STEERING GROUP

REPORT TO ECNWA – APRIL 2017

  • Following on from the PCC public meeting in February, Essex Police have honoured their commitment to provide more visible policing across the District. As part of this, we have held joint events in Saffron Walden and other key locations which has resulted in some recruitment and security equipment sales opportunities. We also spent a day with PCSOs as part of Operation Spice aimed at the elderly and vulnerable in selected locations. More joint activities are planned.
  • We continue to use the ‘Welcome to your New Home’ flyers to encourage new Schemes to be set up in new housing developments. Based on the success of this approach, we have produced a similar flyer for established homes under the banner of ‘Together We Are Stronger’. We have printed 10,000 of these, which have been funded by the CSP, and deliver has just begun.
  • To support this recruitment, we have ordered 50 Street Signs using the new NHW logo. These are high quality Dibondsigns, but we were concerned with the costly fixing brackets. To produce a lower cost solution, we have worked with NSP to introduce a new rivet and adjustable band fixing. These new signs will be purchased using the grant of £1,000 from the High Sheriff’s Fund.
  • Our webmaster has embarked on a project to determine how many of our Schemes are registered on the OurWatch website. As expected, only a small proportion are registered, so the second phase of this project is to increase this registration with the agreement of Scheme Coordinators.
  • Our next edition of the NhW Observer is being distributed to around 15,000 households across the District, but the trend to distribute this by way of a PDF document continues. We are grateful to our partners at Uttlesford District Council for designing, printing and distributing this, as well as the many Coordinators who delivery to their local Scheme members.
  • We are holding the 13th Annual General Meeting on Monday 15th May in Thaxted. As well as reports from our local Community Policing Team, we have invited Detective Inspector Lee Morton from the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate to speak about the growing menace of cybercrime, to update us on how the police are responding to this challenge, and how the public can respond to this threat.