Police Crime Prevention Initiatives will be providing another round of support to the Government’s latest Safer Streets Fund initiative. This second £20 million round of the Safer Streets Fund aims to build upon the momentum instilled by the first round of funding, offering Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) and local authorities the opportunity to invest in new hotspot areas.
Safer Streets Fund 2021-2022 will maintain a number of the core characteristics of the initiative that have already made it a success to date, while also making minor strategic changes such as allowing local authority-orchestrated bids.
For 2021-2022, a total Safer Streets Fund of £20 million has been set, with a maximum of £432,000 worth of grant funding per successful bid. There’s a requirement for a 20% matched funding contribution towards the bid, which can be provided as a financial contribution, or the equivalent of 20% in resourcing costs (eg staff/officer time).
Bidders will also have flexibility to use the matched funding contributions for a wider range of supplementary activity to their bid (eg officer resource in a hotspot).
Police Crime Prevention Initiatives will be providing technical guidance to help PCCs, local authorities and Designing Out Crime Officers deliver on the new objectives, which primarily focus the Safer Streets Fund on four neighbourhood crime types: burglary, robbery, theft from the person and vehicle crime.
The Safer Streets Fund 2021-2022 also allows investment into commercial and non-residential areas such as car parks and city centres. Wider acquisitive crime types (eg shoplifting and bike theft) will be considered as secondary outcomes, as will episodes like anti-social behaviour, violence and drug and alcohol-related crime.
Deciding on prioritisation
Three priority bids per PCC area can be submitted regardless of the lead bidder. Ultimately, PCCs will decide on prioritisation and be required to sign off on any local authority-led bids. The deadline for bids is midnight on 25 March. Bidders will be informed as to whether they’ve been successful by the end of May.
Police Crime Prevention Initiatives’ support for the Safer Streets Fund includes five ‘How to’ crime prevention guides, peer reviews of 15 police forces’ separate approaches to acquisitive crime prevention and the provision of ad hoc advice and guidance to forces having difficulties with delivering specific interventions.
Jon Cole, chief operating officer for Police Crime Prevention Initiatives, observed: “I’m delighted that we can continue to support PCCs, local authorities and police forces in their delivery of the Safer Streets Fund bids.”
The updated Safer Streets Fund crime prevention toolkit can be accessed at this link: https://whatworks.college.police.uk/Research/Documents/Safer_Streets_toolkit.pdf. Further details about applying to the Safer Streets Fund are available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/safer-streets-fund-application-process
The 2020-2021 Safer Streets Fund provided £25 million in funding to 35 PCCs to invest in a range of physical situational crime prevention measures such as home security, ‘alleygating’, CCTV, street lighting, training community wardens or establishing Neighbourhood Watch schemes across 52 high crime areas in England and Wales.
Range of support material
Police Crime Prevention Initiatives created a range of support material for the Safer Streets Fund 2020-2021, among them a number of technical guides, a range of training courses to assist PCCs in making their bids, a series of 26 blogs in the Knowledge Hub and 26 weekly, live, hour-long crime prevention Q&A sessions delivered virtually via Microsoft Teams for those involved in the delivery of the Safer Streets Fund. Further, Police Crime Prevention Initiatives provided ongoing support to local police Designing Out Crime Officers who are attached to police forces and help introduce and implement crime prevention measures and techniques for local areas in a concerted bid to deter and reduce crime.
Police Crime Prevention Initiatives is a police-owned organisation that works to deliver a wide range of innovative crime prevention and demand reduction initiatives designed to support the wider UK police service, Government and the general public. The organisation maintains close working links with the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s national leads, central Government, manufacturers and companies involved in providing security products (within the UK and those in countries that supply the UK), standards authorities and key stakeholders such as planners, architects, developers, local authorities, housing associations, academia and the public.
*Further information about Police Crime Prevention Initiatives is available online at www.policecpi.com
TheSecurityLion 