Lets get cleaning!

Hope you have not been affected by the snow too much - we all say we'd like to see snow at winter, but when it comes there's havoc.

First of all, vehicle crime. Well, at last weeks Chapel Residents Group - predictably there was a lot of concern about vehicle crime within the development. We have continued with our posters and writing to people who we see have left items on display. We tried to reassure the residents of what we are doing, and fortunately since then there have been no further reprots of vehicle crime in Chapel, in fact we have only had three reports in the last week - two in Richmond St and one on Northam estate. The one is Northam is the first report of vehcile crime in Northam in 2009 - outstanding - have to check who is locked up in prison!

We work very closely with other agencies as I have mentioned before, and when we set up the Junior PCSO schemes in Lumpy Lane and Chapel, we got great support from Swaythling Housing association. They recently submitted the scheme for TPAS Connecting People Awards and we have been selected on a shortlist of five schemes from over 100 applications. A fantastic result and recognition of not only the idea of Junior PCSO but also the joint working. The ceremony is in London on 11 March so fingers crossed.

Still with Swaythling Housing, we are assisting them with clean up days in the Chapel development (17 Feb), and Lumpy Lane (19 Feb), where we hope to get residents and children to come out and help clean up the areas for a few hours and generate some community spirit. The neighbourhood wardens and a few other agencies will also be involved.

Another planned clean up is for the footbridge from Chapel to Deanery. The Junior PCSOs painted some of it last year, with help from the council. Following reports of anti-social behaviour from some of the students at the nearby Halls of Residence that use the bridge there are volunteers from the halls coming out to paint and clean up the bridge. Again we will support with some of the juniors, and hopefully a few residents to make a difference. Hopefully the students will take some ownership and consider the local residents on their way to and fro the city centre nightspots.

Finally, I took part in Operation Nicole yesterday. This is a table top exercise, held at Netley Police HQ, involving members of the community where we simulate a terrorist incident in Southampton. It went really well, with the members of the community acting as the police and making the decisions of what they felt should happen. Many of them commented on the problems of what response to take to the constant feed of information and stated how difficult a job the police have when faced with this sort of incident, and how we cannot tell the community everything that is happening. Equally, we found it very useful regarding the expectations of the community, and that actually, even if only a little information is released to the community, if it is done properly, then they feel very much in the loop and therefore part of the solution.

Till next time

Cheers

Dick