Community safety partnership goes from strength to strength

The city council works in partnership with various organisations, including the police, county council and homeless and housing groups, to deliver community safety work across the city.

It aims to focus on health and wellbeing in its bid to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour and has overseen lots of positive and progressive work in Gloucester.

In the last year that has included:

• Helping to oversee the response to the COVID-19 pandemic – more than 2,000 people in Gloucester either offered or received help through the Gloucestershire Help Hub, while a network of 500 ‘street champions’ organised neighbourhood volunteers in the city
• Projects focussing on equality and diversity in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement
• Ongoing work to tackle anti-social behaviour and street drinking
• Taking action to combat food poverty – a food consortium was set up during the pandemic and £28,000 was spent on 5,733 tonnes of food

The work of the SSGP will continue into 2021/22 and has been awarded £30,000 from the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner to fund four projects.

They are:

• Working with health partners to deliver a plan that helps to tackle health inequalities in Gloucester (£10,000)
• Landscaping to deter street drinkers in Skinner Street, Kingsholm (£10,000)
• Investment in mobile CCTV cameras (£5,000)
• Community-led responses in Barton and Tredworth to tackle littering and fly-tipping (£5,000)

Cllr Jennie Watkins, cabinet member for communities and neighbourhoods at Gloucester City Council, said: “The Stronger and Safer Gloucester Partnership is a very successful initiative that has led to a great deal of improvements and positive work across Gloucester. By working together with other agencies we can really make a difference to our communities and I look forward to seeing this work continue.”

The report will be presented to the city council’s cabinet at a meeting on Wednesday 10 March and can be viewed here.