HASTINGS AND ST LEONARDS NHW GENERAL MEETING MINUTES Wednesday 17th October 2018
Attendees: A record of attendees and apologies is available from Graham Crane
1. WELCOME AND INTRODUCTIONS
Graham Crane: Welcomed everyone and thanked them for coming.
2. Apologies: had been received from 5 coordinators and Cllr Colin Fitzgerald,
3. Minutes of previous meeting – were agreed.
4. Police – Aiden Cornwall, Hastings Prevent Policing Inspector, covered
• Crime Hastings rates in Hastings were only marginally up on last year. This compared well with other parts of Sussex where crime rates were going up much faster and now Crawley had the worse crime rates than Hastings. Much of the increase was because the police had got better at recording crime and generating more by catching criminals.
• Crime was changing with fraud/scams increasing dramatically. Other crimes such a violence on Friday and Saturday night had declined. For details of local crime, please see https://www.police.uk/ .
• There were now less PCSOs and PCs and therefore the police were more reliant NHW and members of the public to report crime and suspicious behaviour. Aiden gave a recent example where a resident reported someone behaving suspiciously early one morning in their street. The police found the suspect in possession of stolen goods and found more when they searched his house. Contacting the police can be done in various ways, see https://sussex.police.uk/media/6483/sussex-police-101- card-hastings-web.pdf
• Thanks to the Sussex police council tax precept the police were now recruiting 200 more officers across Sussex by 2022.
• The police’s priorities at the moment are:
▪ “County lines”, where the police are disrupting London drug dealers who are supplying drugs outside London including across Sussex, sometimes using children and vulnerable adults.
▪ Domestic abuse
▪ Theft from vehicles particularly and problem recently with tools stolen from vans. 1. Hastings Borough Council (HBC) Community Safety Manager – John Whittington:
▪ Explained the work of the Safer Hastings Partnership. For more details see https://www.hastings.gov.uk/my_community/community_safety/safer_hastings/
▪ He described how the partners involved, including the police, and how they work together. He gave examples of how they are dealing with anti-social behaviour and the street community. 2. Open forum – Questions, comments & discussion
▪ Street community. The people known as the street community have lots of problems including homelessness, mental health and addiction to alcohol and drugs. As such they were very difficult to deal with or help. That said the HBC and the police had a number of initiatives designed to deal with the problem and help those involved with their problems. These included alcohol free zones, working with shops selling alcohol to reduce the strength, restricting new licenses in saturation areas, working with the many agencies set up to help the street community.
▪ In response to various issues raised, including fly tipping and drug taking. The Aiden and John emphasised the importance of reporting problems. That way the safety team can build a picture of where the problems were and deal with them. See above for police contacts. For HBC this can be done on the MyHastings web site @ https://www.hastings.gov.uk/Report_it. Although the quickest and most efficient method of contacting the Council to report an issue is via My
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Hastings you can also use various phone numbers @ https://www.hastings.gov.uk/contact/hotlines/ 3. Formal Business
i. Chairs report
Graham Crane (GC) gave the chair’s report included in Annex 1.
ii. Treasurers report
We had £894.70 in the bank. The accounts had been audited by HVA.
iii. Election of committee
Existing committee agreed to stand again and were elected with the same roles.
Graham Crane – Chair Anthony McKenzie – Vice-Chair Julia Wells – Treasurer Secretary –tba Helen Dadswell – Committee member Aiden Cornwall – Committee member
Graham reminded everyone that we could still co-opt further members and coordinators did not have to be on the committee to volunteer, and to contact him if anyone was interested in help or had any ideas to share. He thanked the committee for volunteering.
iv. Appointment of auditors
Taking advice from an accountant it was agreed we did not need an audit for such small deposits and low expenditure. We agreed to use Hastings Voluntary Action(HVA) when we did.
5. Any other business – a number of people said they would like street signs. Graham said to contact him
and let him know how many they wanted.
6. Date and time of next meeting(s)
The date of the next meeting would be circulated next summer.
7. Close Graham thanked everyone for coming and closed the meeting.
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Annex 1: Hastings and ST Leonards NHW Chairs Report November 2018
Coordinators
• We have now been set up nearly 5 and half years. So first I’d like to thank all the coordinators for their continuing support and the support you give to your communities as NHW coordinators.
• We have about 86 verified coordinators on the Alert system. There are a few unverified that need to
be investigated. Committee:
• I’d like to thank the committee for their support. We wouldn’t be able to exist without their support.
• It is worth mentioning that we urgently need more people for the committee to remain quorate. Police & Hastings Safety Partnership
• I’d like to thank the police and the Hastings Safety partnership for their work keeping the town safe. This is both catching criminals but most importantly predicting and preventing criminal behaviour. This I hope makes us all feel safer.
• I’d like welcome and thank our Prevent Inspector Aiden Cornwall and John Whittington our HBC
Community Safety Manager Badges, Leaflets & leaflets
• I have a few NHW handbooks, Stay Safe Leaflets, NHW roundels and various other leaflets available,
and we can get more if people need them. Please let me know if you want any.
• I have been some street signs promised. If anyone wants any please let me know. Communications
• We’ve been on the new Alert system for about a year now. Hopefully you are getting messages from
NHW and the police via this system.
• We also have a Facebook page and a web page with useful links.
• Keeping the distribution list up to date is an ongoing and difficult task. So please do make sure your contact details are up to date or we will lose contact with you. This is particularly important if you change email address. Recruitment: One of our main aims is to recruit more members, volunteers and street coordinators. So if you know anyone who is interest please let me know.
Graham Crane Chair Hastings and St Leonards NHW Tel: 07889 704824 Email: hastingsandsl.nhw@gmail.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Hastings.St.Leonards.Neighbourhood.Watch/ Web site: https://sites.google.com/site/hastingsandstleonardsnhw/ National NHW: http://www.ourwatch.org.uk/
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Annex 2: Hastings and St Leonards Neighbourhood Watch – Key Contacts
Name Phone Mobile Role/Organisation Email Graham Crane 01424 446351 07889 704824 Hastings & St Leonards NHW hastingsandsl.nhw@gmail.com Julia Wells 07770 525918 Treasurer Hastings & St Leonards NHW julia72003@aol.com Anthony McKenzie 01424 435744 Vice Chair Hastings & St Leonards NHW anthony.mackenzie@aims.co.uk Helen Dadswell 01424 715370 07760199884 Committee Member Hastings & St Leonards NHW helendadswell@aol.com Aiden Cornwall See below See below See below See below John Wright 01444 247368 07917 385213 Chairman Sussex NHW john.w.wright@btinternet.com Derek Pratt 01293 418164 07726 730562 Deputy Chairman Sussex NHW derek.pratt@btconnect.com John Wittington 01424 451438 0771 0854658 HBC Community Safety Manager JWhittington@hastings.gov.uk Colin Fitzgerald 01424 451066 Councillor & Chair of the Safer Hastings Partnership cllr.colin.fitzgerald@hastings.gov.uk
To contact Hastings police’s new organisation please see http://www.sussex.police.uk/hastings/ where it says email: hastings@sussex.pnn.police.uk and by telephone: 01273 404934 . Use 999 for an emergency and 101 for non-emergencies. Useful Links: https://sites.google.com/site/hastingsandstleonardsnhw/ https://www.facebook.com/Hastings.St.Leonards.Neighbourhood.Watch/