Previous parts – Part 1 (Foreword and Intro), Part 2 (Earning), Part 3 (Learning), Part 4 (Healthy)
The Corporate Plan is a long document that contains a number of parts. Unfortunately, there are some omissions and there aren’t LAA targets for all that the Council want to achieve. However, they have set out additional objectives. The problem is that they are in documents that could be hard for the average person to find. How can the people affected by the Council hold them to account if the details aren’t prominent. What happened to transparency? It’s fair to say that not everybody is interested, but they should be. What Hull City Council does can directly affect them. This is the same for all Councils across the country.
During this series of posts, I have analysed the key sections and assessed the performance of the Council based on their own targets and that of the LAA. I have separated each key section so that it’s easy for everyone to find the thing that matters most to them.
In this final part, I look at ‘Safe’. This covers the important area of safe communities and crime prevention. Bizarrely, I’ve also found that this part of the Corporate Plan covers waste/litter, which makes no sense. Why would graffiti or fly posting mean it’s not safe for people in Hull? Anyway, I hope you find this interesting.
Found on hullstudent.com after doing a Google Image Search.
Key Improvement Targets
The following targets (as was the case for the previous areas) do not go into too many specifics, but they do indicate what the Council is focusing on between 2009 and 2012 (the plan’t period of time):
- Dealing with local concerns about anti-social behaviour and crime
- Ensuring that young offenders’ engage in suitable education, employment or trainin
- Prevent the need for vulnerable children and young people to become “looked after” or subject of a child protection plan
- Improve the support & opportunities for children and young people who are looked after
- Improve street and environmental cleanliness, by dealing with levels of litter, cleanliness, graffiti, fly-posting and fly tipping
Anti-social behaviour has been a big talking point for many years, mostly since the introduction of ASBOs by the previous government. In the section of the Corporate Plan that lists LAA targets (you can also find them here), there is no baseline figure and no target for 2010/2011. In the Head of Executive Report from November 2010, the second quarter performance overview shows that they have no data and no information about being on track to meet any targets. There are no additional targets set out in the report’s Appendix document either. This shows a distinct lack of appreciation for the problems caused as a result of anti-social behaviour.
There is more information for the second point though. The Council have a baseline figure from 2006/2007, which is 56% (or 55.1% if you look at page 10 of the Appendix). For 2010/2011, the LAA target is an ambitious 75%. In the Appendix, we see that the Actual figure (not the target) for 09/10 was 68.38%. This is a significant improvement when you compare it to both of the baselines (remember, it’s better to have a higher percentage in this case). Unfortunately, the actual figure for the first quarter of 2010/2011 is 60.9%, which is much lower than the previous 12 month period and means that the Council isn’t even close to meeting the target.
As for the third point, there is no LAA target, nothing in the Appendix document and it’s not even mentioned in the Head of Executive Report. That is terrible. I presume they think this area is important to some people?
The fourth point also looks at the subset of children who are classed as ‘looked after’. There are plenty of schemes set out in the Health and Wellbeing area (e.g. for participation in sport) and there is plenty of information regarding the reduction of bullying. However, all of that is for all groups of children covered by the Council. There is nothing like that for those who are ‘looked after’. However, the Appendix document shows that there are a few educational targets (such as those relating to level 4 Maths and English at Key Stage 2). Those haven’t been achieved and the same can be said for the target about ‘looked after’ children getting five or more GCSEs with grades A*-C.
The final point about the environment is (as I’ve said) in this section for no obvious reason. However, there are targets worth looking at that relate to litter, detritus, graffiti and fly-tipping. These thing are assessed annually by DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) using a letter grading scale (A-D). There are two LAA targets which are split into sub targets within the Appendix document. The areas of Hull that have been graded C-D for litter, detritus and graffiti and not improved from Q1 to Q2 of 2010/2011, but the percentages are better than 2009/2010 and they are on track to beat the targets. Hull got a grade 3 for fly-tipping in 2007/2008. Naturally, their target is 1 (‘Very Effective’), but the annual assessment hadn’t been done at the time of the appendix’s publication, so the result is unknown. I find it interesting that only one of the Council’s environmental targets uses a numerical grade as a unit of measure and the others are percentages. What is even more confusing is that DEFRA use letters (an example can be found here).
Changing for the better
The following are more specific details about how the Key Improvement Targets for ‘Safe’ are going to be achieved:
- Invest £1M through the Community Safety Fund in local areas to support community-based activities and projects that will enable quick responses to local concerns of anti-social behaviour and crime
- Implement a preventative and public awareness raising programme to promote safer drinking throughout the city
- Review the current Licensing Policy and develop cumulative impact zones
- Work in partnership with other agencies to use a broader range of sanctions to tackle anti-social behaviour and increase residents’ sense of well-being
- Work with partners to develop an early identification and prevention approach to reduce the number of first time entrants to the youth justice system
- Support the further development of city-wide of restorative approaches, as a more effective response to unacceptable behaviour by some young people
They also wanted to reduce re-offending by:
- increasing the proportion of young offenders engaged in suitable education, training and employment;
- ensuring that all young offenders have access to suitable accommodation;
- ensuring that interventions are properly focused and aligned to need;
- developing integrated youth services provision
I am unable to confirm how much of the £1m investment for the CSF will remain after local government refinancing. However, after looking at this page, I can tell you that the £1m will probably be shared by all 23 wards as they have their own Community Safety Funds to help relevant projects.
I have already covered the points about anti-social behaviour and youth offending. Unfortunately, there are no LAA targets or anything in the Appendix document relating to safe drinking and licensing.
Crime in the area
On page 10 of the Appendix document, there are various targets relating to crime. However, only one of them has results for part of 2010/2011 (Assault with injury crime rate). The unit used is incidents per 1000 people. The target for Q2 is 5.47 and the actual figure was 5.14. While this is only a small difference, they have still beaten their target and this is pleasing. The Head of Executive Report had this paragraph on the subject, which is also good news:
“The current rolling 12 month trend is downwards and the rate is 9.51 per 1000 population. This is below the figure submitted by Humberside Police at the end of 2009/10 of 11.77 and also below the target set for this year 2010/11 of 10.94 per 1000 population. The only ward in the city where the rate is currently above the Hull average and rising is Longhill at 9.78 crimes per 1000 population.”
To find up to date statistics for all crimes in the area, please click on this link.
Summary & Conclusion
I have discovered some very interesting things whilst researching for this series of posts and the ‘Safe’ area is no different. Once again, I have found that the Council suffers from a lack of data for certain aspects and hasn’t set specific targets for particular areas. The point I made about anti-social behaviour, youth offending and ‘looked after’ kids earlier on are worrying, but the Council has also achieved some of it’s targets such as the one about assualt with injury.
If any Council members read some or all of this series of posts and have opinions about what I have typed, please leave a comment on the relevant post. As usual, I also welcome the opinions of any other people who choose to read my blog.
So, what do you think?