ASB Awareness Week highlights hotspot patrolling grant: £1 million boost to tackle anti-social behaviour
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Lincolnshire Police are supporting ASB Awareness Week 2024 and using the opportunity to highlight the good work to come from the £1 million hotspot patrolling grant secured by the Police and Crime Commissioner, Marc Jones, from the Home Office to tackle anti-social behaviour across the county.
We are joining the national campaign to tackle anti-social behaviour (ASB) and keep people in Lincolnshire safe. Running from November 18 to 24, ASB Awareness Week aims to encourage communities to take a stand, highlights the actions that can be taken by those experiencing it, and signposts to help and support.
Organised by the community safety organisation, Resolve, the week is also an opportunity to highlight good work within our communities. We will be shining a light on our ‘hotspot policing’ across Lincolnshire.
YouGov research commissioned by Resolve found that almost 1 in 5 people have had to consider moving home because of the impact ASB was having on them; 1 in 10 have actually moved. Despite this, over half of those surveyed who were either a victim or witness of ASB did not report the ASB. We are urging members of the public not to suffer in silence if they experience ASB.
ASB is sometimes perceived as trivial, but is actually defined as “conduct that has caused, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm, or distress to any person.” We know that harassment, alarm and distress do not feel 'trivial' to the person affected.
The East Commander for Local Policing and Prevention, Superintendent Fran Harrod said, “When we talk about our comparatively low levels of ASB in Lincolnshire, we know this is no consolation if there is an issue in your area. It can be seen as 'low level' in comparison with some of the things we deal with, but it can have a huge impact on communities, affecting feelings of safety and quality of life. Everyone has the right to live without fear.”
Hello. My name's Superintendent Fran Harrod and I'm the East Commander, which means that I have the east side of the county to look after in day to day policing.
I'd like to talk to you today a little bit about the anti-social behaviour hotspot work that we're doing in force.
And so the general picture in relation to this is around £1 million worth of the funding that we were awarded by the Home Office.
Other partnership forces, were doing trials and found that their anti-social behaviour patrols as well as a serious violence patrols, were are actually taking place in the same area.
So those pilot forces combined and said "let's patrol the same areas". The government said, "yes" and money was given out by the PCC's office for that to occur.
Now, the money that was provided was for additional high-visibility patrols of authority figures.
It's not necessarily police officers. So if we look at what's going on within Lincolnshire at the moment, we have colleagues from the Arson Task Force and Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue conducting hotspot patrols in the Gainsborough area.
We have Community Wardens conducting patrols in the Lincoln City area and we, of course, have your local police officers and PCSOs conducting patrols all over the force area.
So, how do we establish where the hotspots were?
We really dug into the data and we found, as did nationally, that, a lot of the time, areas where anti-social behaviour was present was also the same areas where violence was present.
So here in Boston, that's the general town centre area, which might not be particularly news to anybody, but we do everything on an evidence base.
So what we did was looked at how many patrols we could carry out across the entire county of Lincolnshire, and we picked out certain areas where there was more prevalence of anti-social behaviour and serious violence, although accepting the fact that we do still live in one of the safest counties in the country.
So on my side of the county, being the east, we have patrols in Louth, we have patrols in Mablethorpe, we have patrols in Skegness and we have patrols here in Boston.
And on the west side of the county, we have patrols in Gainsborough, we have patrols in Lincoln and we have patrols in Sleaford.
The officers are tasked with engaging with the community as well as carrying out the patrols because every single second counts. So they'll be speaking to you whilst they're out and about to let you know what they're doing, and why,
And if you've got a business in that area, they'll be popping in to see how things are for you.
They'll be taking action when they see anti-social behaviour or serious violence, obviously.
But the idea and the methodology behind it goes very much back to those boots on the ground, that presence in an area where we know there's a prevalence of anti-social behaviour and of serious violence, making you feel more secure, but ultimately dealing with the problems in those areas and making our communities a safer place to live, work and visit.
Anti-social behaviour includes many categories such as misuse of fireworks, disputes with neighbours, nuisance noise, nuisance animals, vehicles, unwanted calls or visits, littering and fly tipping. Supt Harrod explained, “There are a broad range of behaviours that are anti-social and a number of organisations play a part in addressing them. We want to make sure that people know who to go to and how to report anti-social behaviour. It may be us, local council or a registered housing provider who deal with your issue, and we don’t want not knowing who to go to being a barrier to getting help.”
Whatever issue you are facing, you can find out who can help in the information pages on our website. Here you can find out who deals with what. If it’s an issue for Lincolnshire Police, you will be able to submit a report online. If not, you will be directed to the right channel. Visit our dedicated antisocial behaviour section and find out more here.
We will also be highlighting the support for victims of anti-social behaviour. There is support regardless of if you decide to report the issue. Supt Harrod said, “There are channels of support that we want everyone to know about. Victim Lincs work tirelessly to help people affected and signpost them to support. Please never feel your issue is not important enough to seek support.” Find out about the support organisations available here.
Lincolnshire's Police and Crime Commissioner, Marc Jones said: "These additional foot patrols are already proving how important boots on the ground across our communities are. They have been received very positively by residents, business owners and the police officers themselves but it’s important to recognise this has been enabled by a one-off lump sum. Once that money is exhausted we simply cannot afford to continue unless something changes drastically in our funding. That is why I will continue my campaign to get our county force a funding package that can deliver policing that we all want for our communities. Our residents want more visible policing and we want to deliver that. If we had the same funding as Cumbria we would have 500 more officers. That’s how ridiculous the current formula is.”
Frustratingly for victims, sometimes anti-social behaviour does not have a quick or easy fix. It can be complicated and ingrained. Where you have had an issue that has been reported three or more times in the last six months, and it’s not been resolved, you have the right to request an anti-social behaviour case review through your local council. Find out more about anti-social behaviour case reviews here.
More on hotspot policing
In March 2023, the Government published a new Anti-Social Behaviour Action Plan, which included funding for anti-social behaviour (ASB) Hotspot Patrols. Lincolnshire have been provided with £1 million of non-recurrent funding for 2024/2025. The aim of the patrols is to focus activity and increase visibility to reduce ASB within the hotspot and surrounding areas which have the highest levels of ASB and serious violence offences.
Using data recorded about the type and location of incidents we are making use of innovative data analytics and mapping technologies and using this data in our resource planning to determine when and where to increase the presence of police officers in problems areas. This valuable funding enables officers to carry out increased foot patrols via a specially dedicated overtime budget. Officers patrol specific areas which have been identified as ‘hotspots’ using data to complement the exisiting priority setting and tasking methodology. It is important to emphasise that this hotspot activity is not in place of the important work our Neighbourhood Policing Teams do each day, it is to complement it by tackling some of the issues before they become bigger problems.
Hotspot areas in Lincolnshire include Lincoln, Skegness, Boston, Louth, Sleaford, Gainsborough and Mablethorpe.
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