Voscur Reps Report July 2008
Bristol – the safest city in the world for all
‘Bristol – the safest city in the world for all’. This is now the aspiration of the Safer Bristol Partnership, which was adopted at a recent away day. The phrase is an adaptation from something John Long, the new Assistant Chief Constable for Bristol, said when he set out his vision for Bristol. It’s quite a tall order as Bristol is still in the top ten worst cities in the UK for crime, but the good news is that for the first time in many years the partnership has many people on it with a real sense of purpose and vision of what could be.
The main purpose of the away day was to reflect on a report from the Home Office’ s Partnership Support Programme (PSP). This programme is not an inspection, but an opportunity for the partnership to review its effectiveness and receive expert advice on how it could improve it’s performance in six key areas. We mainly focused on the first of these ‘Empowered and Effective Leadership’, and discussed how the work of the partnership could be better owned and understood. There will be some changes. After many years with a senior Councillor in the chair, for the next three months the partnership will be chaired by Jan Ormondroyd, the Chief Executive of the Council, and then by Brian McCutcheon of Avon Fire and Rescue Service.
The important issue for the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector is the recommendation four of the PSP report which looks at ‘Engaged Communities’. There are plans for the development of an ‘Engaging Communities Strategy’ and we have asked for active involvement in this development by Voscur. There will be links as well to work on Neighbourhood Partnerships and Comprehensive Area Assessments. Any member organisations who would like to be involved can contact me or Alex Raikes at SARI (tel: 0117 942 0060).
In other partnership work we must be near some kind of breakthrough on the issue of transparent commissioning for at least some of the community safety services that the partnership needs to deliver across the service. I have written about this many times before but it is now moved onto the agenda of the Commissioning Group and we hope to see a significant result in time for the next financial year.
Finally good news – the end of the three year period to April 2008 has seen a significant drop in overall crime in Bristol, and Government Office are quite pleased!
David Maggs is Voscur Rep to the Safer Bristol Partnership
email: david@ccisr.org.uk