Safer communities

Our community safety team works in partnership with Thames Valley Police, Vale of White Horse District Council and other agencies to help build confident and safer communities in the Vale of White Horse and South Oxfordshire districts. Working together to reduce crime, disorder and the fear of crime, these agencies are collectively known as the South and Vale Community Safety Partnership (CSP). 

South and Vale Community Safety Partnership (CSP)

The CSP aims to deliver projects that:

• tackle concerns affecting the whole community (for example, supporting a joined up approach to reducing anti social behaviour)
• support victims or prevent people from becoming a victim of crime or anti social behaviour (for example, funding a dedicated outreach service for victims of domestic abuse and their children)
• tackle offenders or those who are at risk of committing crime and anti social behaviour (for example, developing projects that utilise the services of the Thames Valley Probabtion Unpaid Work Scheme in the districts)

The Partnership has written a plan for 2011-12 which sets out all of the projects it will be delivering during the year. You can find a copy of the plan on the right hand side of this page. To help it achieve its aims, the CSP can provide funding for projects that benefit local communities.

Community Safety Partnership members

The CSP is made up of representatives from the following organisations:

• Oxfordshire County Council
• Oxfordshire Drugs and Alcohol Action Team (DAAT)
• Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service
• NHS Oxfordshire
• Soha
• South Oxfordshire District Council
• Sovereign Vale Housing
• Thames Valley Police
• Thames Valley Police Authority
• Thames Valley Probation Service
• Vale of White Horse District Council.

Community safety projects

The CSP have enabled many different projects that help support their plan. These are run together with outside organisations and the community.

Here are some examples of projects that have been funded by the CSP:

Faringdon

A community art project with the art department and students of Faringdon Community College helped to improve the appearance of the underpass, which connects the Lees and Portway.

Some comments on the project

“The art mural on the underpass has put the ‘community’ into Faringdon Community College”

“I have been particularly impressed with the partnership approach adopted. Working with local residents the community college, the Community Safety team and other key stakeholders we have directly addressed the local issue and increased our visibility.”

Henley

A number of homes in Henley were broken into over the summer so the CSP purchased new neighbourhood watch signs to help revive, raise the profile and increase neighbourhood watch coverage in the area. Neighbourhood watch schemes can act as a useful burglary deterrent.

Signs have been put up in areas where existing schemes didn’t have signs or where the signs were in a state of disrepair. Some will be given to new schemes.

Community safety working group

The CSP is a strategic group however the working group for the partnership is the Joint Agency Tasking and Co-ordination (JATAC) group. JATAC brings together a wide range of agencies working in South and Vale to tackle community safety problems that can’t be resolved locally due to their complexity, scale etc. This is done through a monthly meeting attended by organisations including the police, Fire and Rescue, the district council, Environment Agency and housing associations.

Information is shared and actions are agreed to jointly tackle the issues brought forward by attendees. There is also a small amount of funding available to help deliver the actions.

For more information about the South and Vale Community Safety Partnership or JATAC, please contact us.