Agenda item

The Director of Neighbourhood Services will present an update on the Council’s knife crime strategy.

The Director of Neighbourhood and Environmental Services submitted a presentation on the development of a Knife Crime and Serious Violence Strategy for Leicester.

The Assistant City Mayor for Neighbourhood Services and Director of Neighbourhood and Environmental Services introduced the item, noting that the Strategy was being developed to provide a coordinated approach to knife crime which was community led.

The Community Safety (Knife Crime) Co-Ordinator presented the item, it was noted that:

·   The development of this Strategy was a pledge in the City Mayor’s Manifesto.

·    Crime data indicated that the majority of perpetrators and victims of knife crime were under 25 and male. The number of incidents involving under 25s fluctuated over time, but overall incidents were trending slowly downwards.

·    Parliament was currently considering changes to legislation to give public bodies a legal duty to work together to tackle serious violence, which would also newly include domestic abuse and sexual offences, therefore these new aspects would be included in the Strategy going forward.

·   Communities across the city had been consulted for the Strategy through community events, as well as a Steering Group and Taskforce Group.

·   The Strategy was initially launched in July 2021 and was Council-wide, meaning that many Departments were included in the work.

·    Coming out of the community consultation, 34 recommendations had been produced. These were based around a wide variety of areas.

·    The aim was to finalise the Strategy and launch the recommendations in March.

·    In order to action the recommendations, a number of projects had been launched. This included the community designed Community Mentor Project, and the Reach Project which was funded by the Home Office.

·    Many other initiatives were already ongoing in the Council to tackle this agenda.

In response to Members’ questions, it was noted that:

·    The Safer Leicester Partnership was liaising with the Police and OPCC’s office to get crime data in more usable formats. A variety of different data was available on the issue, recorded by various public bodies

·    Effects of the strategy may start to be seen when the recommendations were implemented, however it was a long-term strategy so the full impact would take time to show.

·    One of the recommendations was to have an audit of Pupil Referral Units, which were not regulated by Ofsted.

·         The issue of trauma was dealt with in the recommendations with regards to positive messaging and supporting those impacted by knife crime.

·         Issues with funding of Youth Clubs had been raised in the consultation. It was hoped that community spaces could be made more accessible for youth activities with regards to cost.

·         The £450k of funding for the strategy was provided by several public bodies, with the Council providing £250k. This was priming money to help develop more sustainable support.

·         The goal was to allow communities to take a bottom-up approach to knife crime over a long-term period.

·         The east and west of the city remained the hotspots for knife crime. These areas were the focus of the Community Mentor Project.

·         Leicester was in the top 20 nationally for knife incidents, which was why Home Office funding had been received.

AGREED:

1.    That the Commission recommends that Members’ comments raised be taken into account by Officers implementing this work.

2.    That the Commission recommends that a Briefing for all Councillors be held on the issue of knife crime.

3.    That the Commission requests a progress update in 6 months.

4.    That the Commission requests that the slides be presented be included in the minutes pack for the meeting.