H&F is a wonderful place to live, and despite falling crime rates in some areas, the rise in violent crime is of real concern.
Each year, our Community Safety Partnership (made up of health, probation, policing and other partners) carries out a detailed review of crime data and agrees a Community Safety Plan, which informs our priorities.
The Community Safety Partnership also oversees and supports the work of partner agencies, including the Metropolitan Police, as they work to rebuild the trust and confidence of our communities following the Baroness Casey review and, subsequently, the New Met for London Plan.
As a council, we are proud to have created one of the largest Law Enforcement Teams (LET) in Britain, comprising over 70 uniformed staff, who patrol the borough day and night, seven days a week.
Their presence and early intervention, together with our advanced CCTV network of nearly 2,000 cameras, is helping to build a safer borough for everyone.
We are determined to safeguard our residents from harm, including through the delivery of our corporate parenting responsibilities to protect children in care, and through strong regulatory enforcement action against criminals and rogue traders that seek to undermine fair, safe and honest trading and environmental health standards.
The Gangs, Violence and Exploitation Unit (GVEU) works in collaboration with the Police to support young people with bespoke support.
Our Youth Justice Service also works in partnership with the Unit, and was rated ‘Outstanding’ in 2022. There was a reduction in the number of young first-time entrants into the criminal justice system between 2020 and 2022, with the rate below the London and England averages.
Our Community Safety Team is also working to ensure that Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) is prevented, survivors are supported, and abusers are held to account.
Our ambition
We want to put residents and victims at the heart of everything we do and keep them safe.
We must continue to work in partnership to safeguard our residents and enforce high trading and environmental health standards across our borough.
This means delivering on our statutory responsibilities and holding criminals to account, ensuring the right services are in place at the right time to support victims and those at the greatest risk.
Short term goals
In the short term, we will:
- continue to invest in our high performing Law Enforcement Team
- tackle violent crime through our Gangs, Violence and Exploitation Unit
- deliver the ambitions of our Modern Slavery and Serious Violence Strategies and refresh our Hate Crime Strategy
- continue to deliver the Prevent Duty in the face of national funding cuts
- deliver our locally focused strategy to tackle VAWG to make our borough a safe place for women and girls and hold perpetrators to account, starting with
our street sexual harassment Public Space Protection Order and Safer Streets programme - deliver targeted crime prevention operations in Shepherd's Bush Green and Hammersmith Broadway, where we see the borough's highest crime rates
- continue to deliver targeted regulatory enforcement action against rogue traders and private rented sector landlords in partnership with the police and other partners
- set out a clear statement on how we will enhance our private rented sector policy position.
Long term goals
In the long term, we will:
- invest further in refuge accommodation for domestic abuse survivors by purchasing properties and funding vital improvement works and invest in prevention and intervention strategies to make the borough safer for women and girls
- deliver a £5.4m CCTV investment programme by the end of 2025 to 2026
- work with Public Health to combat drugs through increased treatment referral, targeting dealing, and supporting affected children - supported by a new combatting drugs partnership.