Affinities welcomes 'Improved local crime information' and 'wider local data about neighbourhood issues'

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Friday, 20, Jul 2007 12:00

"………. local crime information should be further improved, as an integral part of the development of Neighbourhood Policing teams and a key means by which they are held accountable to their neighbourhoods. The Home Office will …….. make crime data available on a monthly and consistent basis to people throughout the country at a level that makes sense to them locally and as part of the availability of wider local data about neighbourhood issues, in the next 12 months….. This will provide the public with the means to influence local crime priorities, and to engage with agencies about how well they are performing against those priorities......... Greater access to local crime information for the public, and engagement of the public by local agencies, will also act as a key lever to improve performance" according to the Home Office report "Cutting Crime - a new partnership 2008-11".

The Home Secretary is reported as saying that information will be available street-by-street.

Some of the information revealed will - presumably - contribute to a better appreciation locally of the direction in which family and social cohesion is moving. The Conservative Social Justice Policy Group are suggesting - in their report on Family Breakdown in Breakthrough Britain - that there should be a family and social cohesion index. It would be very useful for there to be all-party agreement about the publishing of neighbourhood statistics. At present - when figures are available - too much energy is dissipated in arguing about which figures are more accurate.

Figures such as ASBOS, truancy, and domestic violence will - presumably - be published. It would be very interesting to know when "crime data [is] available on a monthly and consistent basis to people throughout the country at a level that makes sense to them locally and as part of the availability of wider local data about neighbourhood issues" what other neighbourhood social data will be published? Should we just wait and see, or should we write to our MPs and ask them to find out? One suspects the more people who write, the more likely it is that comprehensive information will be published.

Most people will agree with the government that, "Greater access to local crime information for the public, and engagement of the public by local agencies, will also act as a key lever to improve performance." This principle must surely apply across a range of social issues. Indeed, the government publishes a league table of local authority 'performance' relating to changes in the local rates of teenage pregnancy, so the government is already endorsing the principle that the public and local community leaders are more likely to engage with an issue, if they can understand the figures that affect and reflect their neighbourhood.

It is good to see - enshrined in a government policy - the principle of engaging with people at a local level by publishing the neighbourhood information that will be of interest to them. Let's hope the government actually gets around to publishing "wider local data about neighbourhood issues ... in the next 12 months" and that MPs hold them to it.