Happy New Year and community priorities in Northam

Well, Happy New Year to everyone and I hope you all had a good Christmas. Several of us were on duty for New Years Eve for the City Centre operation, duty time was 8-5, which initially I thought was not too bad - but then found out is was 8pm to 5am New Years Day! As you can imagine it was a busy night, in fact every cell in Hampshire was filled that night. I had 5 officers to look after the bottom end of town - the High St down to Town Quay and up the St Mary St - St Marys Rd spine. Generally speaking we were not too bad, but Wahoo in the High St was at capacity with a huge queue outside in the freezing weather. The Section 27 direction to leave the area legislation was used quite a bit, ensuring some potential troublemakers were removed from the city centre before they were a real nuisance. Anyway, onwards and upwards and look forward to next year!

On Monday evening we held the Northam Community Priority Setting meeting. This was held in the Northam Tenants and Residents Office and we had a good number of people attend, including Councillors Derek Burke and Stephen Barnes-Andrews. I am really grateful for their support and that of the Housing officer and neighbourhood wardens. It was decided to drop drugs issues as a priority, the illegal left and right turning at the Prince of Wales junction was retained as a priority, and the other two priorities that were added were vehicles driving the wrong way around Kent St and dog mess on the estate. Fortunately the latter can be passed directly to the Council - but these meetings really identify the concerns of the residents and generally speaking it’s the quality of life issues that are highlighted. Once PC Dave Houghton gets back from leave he can start enforcing the traffic offences, in November and December he issued over 20 £30 tickets for the offences at the Prince of Wales junction.

We have planned a similar meeting for St Marys, and that will be held at Central Hall, St Mary St on 9 February from 6pm - 8pm. I am currently collating the names of volunteers who would like to be part of the Community Priority Panel, who will get together after the meeting to decide how we will progress with the three issues that were identifyied as the Community Priorities.

Next week we will start up the Junior PCSO schemes and tag rugby again, I hope for better weather! With the tag rugby we are planning to increase the delivery to more than St Marys school. Hopefully, we can do sessions at the youth clubs in Northam and St Marys which will provide a interest for holiday sessions, probably in the Easter School Holidays. Hampshire Rugby Football Union (RFU) have submitted funding applications and are working with us and supporting the programme.

We have reviewed the crime figures for Northam and St Marys for the last year, and the reductions have been really good, the problem now will be trying to keep them that low. For St Marys there has been a reduction of over 20% for vehicle crime, burglary and criminal damage which is great. Northam has shown even greater reductions, vehicle crime down from 157 to 62, criminal damage down from 179 to 104 and burglary down from 84 to 58. A check of those who spent time in custody during 2009 clearly shows who had been actively involved in crime in 2008, so it's a challenge for us to put them back there - or get them to change their ways for 2010.

Well that’s it for now, have a good New Year

Cheers

Dick