Safer Watford, the town's Community Safety Partnership, brings together Watford Borough Council, Herts Constabulary, Herts Fire & Rescue, Herts County Council and other key local organisations.
The partnership works together to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour. We achieve this by protecting the vulnerable, diverting people away from crime and keeping you informed.
Community Safety Plan 2022-2025
Each year the Community Safety Partnership, also known as Safer Watford, is provided with strategic assessment from County Analysts, to review performance and reconsider its priorities and targets.
The strategic assessment is a partnership document that takes account of the priorities of partners, views of the community, current trends, volumes of crime, categories and future projections.
Read the Community Safety Plan
Aim and purpose of this plan
The Community Safety Plan briefly outlines the aims of the Community Safety Partnership at a strategic level.
It defines how the priorities are set from the strategic assessment will be worked towards over a three-year period but refreshed each year and amended if necessary.
The priorities in this strategy are:
1. Acquisitive crime
This priority has links to shop theft, robbery, antisocial behaviour and drug misuse, that impacts our businesses, residents, and visitors to the town centre.
2. Community wellbeing
Domestic Abuse Crime/Non-Crime, ASB, Hate Crime, Series Violence and Violence Against Women and Girls. This priority is led by front line engagement with the community, analytics (including ECHO) and public feedback where the aim is to prevent and resolve emerging issues and community tensions.
3. Reassure and inform
Communication and engagement with the community to ensure they are objectively informed of the criminal activity, they can express their concerns and be reassured by the response and actions taken by the Community Safety Partnership.
Governance
This plan will be governed by Safer Watford.
There are a number of groups who will take in to account the priorities of this plan. This will steer the strategic work of Safer Watford.
It will be most relevant to this level, informing the development of action plans and regular reporting to monitoring groups.
Monitoring and Evaluation
Success will be demonstrated by reductions in offences in the key areas the strategic assessment outlined, the three key priorities are listed above.
The historically low number of crimes and ASB recorded in 2020 linked to the lock down and tier strategy implemented to deal with the Corona virus pandemic, means this data will need be set aside and the 2021 to 2022 crime analysis data will be used as the baseline for monitoring of the effectiveness of the community safety plan.
Resources
The work of Safer Watford is met within each agency's budget.
Lead Officer
Peter Taylor the elected Mayor of Watford is Chair of the Community Safety Partnership.
Responsible Authorities Group, which sets and monitors the priorities.
For further information please contact Watford's Environmental Health / Community Safety department by using our online contact form, or by telephone on 01923 278405.
