Boston policing plan

Working together to make Boston the safest place to live, work and visit.

Download a PDF version of this plan.

Foreword

With one of the most diverse communities in Lincolnshire, policing Boston on behalf of all of its residents and visitors requires an approach which brings together our officers, other agencies and broader community groups.

Our Neighbourhood Policing Plan helps us target our resources to protect communities, enabling residents to have their say on local policing priorities. Using an evidence-based approach which uses police and partner data to identify what and where the needs are, our officers will apply their problem-solving skills address to those needs.

Our resources will always focus on areas of high harm and vulnerability.

With a population of around 46,000 people, Boston is the second largest urban area in the Lincolnshire policing area, so we strategically place our Neighbourhood Policing Team (NPT) to operate from Boston Police Station covering the borough. We work alongside our 24/7 response policing teams who provide the all important emergency response function. We also have specialist support teams such as the Rural Crime Action Team and the Roads Policing Unit.

We are working in hugely challenging circumstances, yet we work tirelessly to locate and arrest criminals, gathering the required evidence to bring them into the justice system.

Reflecting on our previous plan, we achieved some great results and our focus on tacking street drinking and antisocial behaviour in Boston will persist. We will also target incidents of hare coursing in rural areas, ensuring we replicate the impressive court consequences for those caught.

Our successful collaboration with the University of Lincoln is on-going, with them helping to set up residents’ groups within the community, conducting focus groups, and seeking valuable funding for environmental improvement grants in hotspot areas such as West Street.

Our commitment to address shoplifting through Operation Continents will continue, securing convictions and Criminal Behaviour Orders against repeat and prolific offenders, and we will continue to build on our effective close working relationship with Boston Borough Council and other partners in tackling anti-social behaviour (ASB) and crime collectively.

Our officers and partners demonstrate unwavering dedication throughout the year, and it is a privilege to be part of such an outstanding team. Through continued collaboration with our partner agencies, I am determined that together, we can make the Borough of Boston the safest, most welcoming, and prosperous place for people to live, work and visit.

Inspector Ian Cotton
Neighbourhood Policing – Boston

Our vision

Working together to make the county the safest place to live, work and visit.

Our strategy

In line with the force priorities there are three areas that underpin our neighbourhood policing plan 2025/26.

Stop crime and ASB

We will do our utmost to prevent harm before it happens and lessen the impact when it does.

Protect people from harm

We will work with the community to deliver a series of initiatives to make them feel safe and protect them from harm.

Help those in need

We will work with our partners to identify the most vulnerable in our community, offering a high standard of care. Ensuring we have the right resources in the right place at the right time.

How we will deliver this

We will engage

We will be in the right place at the right time, in the heart of our communities.

We will listen

We will listen to the views of all our communities whether residential or transient. Ensuring the local policing approach is adaptable and aligned to their needs.

We will inform

We will communicate throughout the year using face-to-face engagements and across a number of online platforms.

We will work together

We will seek out opportunities to work with our partners and offer community participation through our interactions and initiatives.

Stop crime and ASB

We will do our utmost to prevent harm before it happens and lessen the impact when it does.

Anti-social behaviour

Hotspot Patrols - Operation Plotting was introduced to tackle ASB, crime, and reduce the fear of crime. The operation focuses on working with the council to tackle long term issues such as environmental factors that contribute to crime/ASB, repeat offenders and protecting the vulnerable. The operation uses analysis to identify hotspots for serious violence and anti-social behaviour so resources can be targeted to these areas. Boston Neighbourhood Policing Team will undertake hotspot patrols to help deter ASB and criminal activity from occurring and target prolific offenders committing shop thefts.

Dispersal orders

A dispersal order gives police officers and police community support officers powers to direct people they suspect are causing or likely to cause crime, nuisance, or anti-social behaviour to members of the public to leave a designated area and not return for up to 48 hours. Under the legislation, officers also have the power to seize any item used in the commission of anti-social behaviour. If a person who has previously been directed to leave the dispersal area returns, an offence would be committed, and they could be arrested. Dispersal orders are an effective tool for dealing with incidents linked to night-time economy and anti-social behaviour.

Prolific shop theft

We will work closely with our partners in store security, Pescod Square and Boston Borough Council CCTV to identify and tackle prolific shop theft offenders. This theft impacts local businesses, with many smaller and independent stores struggling to cover this cost. By focusing efforts on prolific shop theft, research has shown this will also reduce other offences such as burglary and vehicle theft. The Neighbourhood Policing Team will seek Criminal Behaviour Orders for prolific shoplifters. These orders give the courts some significant sentencing powers should they be breached. We will continue to work on Operation Continents, our partnership shop-theft days of action and publish the results of these efforts.

Street drinking

We are aware that residents are worried about antisocial behaviour linked to street drinking and the associated crime that it brings to the town centre. We have taken steps to address this and have seen a marked decrease in the numbers of street drinking incidents being reported to the police. We will continue to work closely with Boston Borough Council Community Rangers who have been brilliant at helping to tackle this issue. Our focused patrols aim to deal with and reduce street drinking, working with our partners in the Community Alcohol Partnership, Police Alcohol Licensing Team, Lincolnshire Recovery Partnership and Homeless Teams to find longer term solutions to the issue.

School engagement

We are strengthening our relationships with the Secondary Schools in our area and Boston College. This year will see us deliver some programmes at the College in conjunction with the Community Engagement Officer for Boston Borough Council. All this work is aimed at building trust between young people and public services. We will include young people’s views when deciding our local policing priorities. We will tackle highlighted issues that make young people feel unsafe and work to increase young people’s feeling of safety in our area. We will work with people with an interest in public services to help them achieve their aims of serving the public. We will also work with schools in Operation Absence with truancy patrols, identifying students absent and returning them to school or a place of education.

Protect from harm

We will work with the community to deliver a series of initiatives to make them feel safe and protect them from harm.

#Fatal5

Throughout the year resources will work alongside specialist officers (such as the Roads Policing Unit) with partners such as the Lincolnshire Road Safety Partnership to make our roads safer, tackling the areas that fall under the #Fatal5, alongside other antisocial behaviour on our roads. Local policing teams will complement responses to force-wide operations on a local level such as the targeting of drink- and drug-drivers on our roads. We will seek to base our response on evidence, requesting where appropriate speed surveys to obtain data that will allow officers to focus their time where most needed.

The #Fatal5 are:

• careless driving
• drink- and drug-driving
• not wearing a seatbelt
• excessive speed
• distraction (including mobile phones)

Joint enforcement activities

We will continue to target premises that sell illicit goods including counterfeit cigarettes, dangerous vapes and counterfeit alcohol alongside our colleagues in Lincolnshire Trading Standards, Home Office Immigration and HMRC. By doing this we aim to target wider criminality and ASB. Operation Nivada is our joint operation in this sphere. We will work to combat Organised Immigration Crime with partners, developing intelligence and acting against those responsible. We will assist our partners to combat illegal working and over-stayers in the UK.

Tackling illegal substances

By developing intelligence against organised groups who utilise premises to grow and subsequently supply illegal substances we will seek to disrupt criminality in the area. Not only is there a risk to the wider community from use of said substances but also the threat around potential faulty electricals and power bypasses creating a fire hazard to said and surrounding properties. We will seek to target and disrupt this behaviour. During any investigation we will also seek to use any monies seized/recovered to invest back into the local community using the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Help those in need

We will work with our partners to identify the most vulnerable in our community, offering a high standard of care. Ensuring we have the right resources in the right place at the right time.

Violence against women and girls (VAWG)

VAWG covers multiple crimes with the common theme being they disproportionately affect women and girls. We will work with other policing teams to ensure such crimes are robustly dealt with and work with partners to ensure such behaviours are shown not be acceptable. We will work with external partners including Crime Stoppers to promote and participate in local/ national campaigns to ensure that those who may be victim of criminality from all communities and backgrounds have the confidence to speak out and report matters to the police.

We want women and girls to feel safe in Boston day and night. We will work with partners including Boston Borough Council, Lincolnshire County Council, the Boston Residents Panel and others to increase the feelings of safety in our town. We will continue our partnership with North Sea Camp to develop environmental improvements for the town, creating ‘pride in place’.

We continue to promote the use of the StreetSafe site, where people can report the times and locations when they have felt vulnerable or unsafe due to factors like inadequate street lighting.

Vulnerable repeat callers

We will work with partner agencies to support those who are repeat callers to police, repeat victims of crime or otherwise vulnerable. This will include those who are at risk of exploitation for example through ‘county lines’ and those whose mental health crises regularly require police intervention. We will seek the full range of support available from other agencies and will use the criminal justice system alongside other avenues of support.

Public engagements

Our team will be accessible in various ways, including traditional meet and greet sessions, online forums, polls, and live chats. We will gather community input on local police resource allocation and offer crime prevention advice. We aim to engage underrepresented communities by identifying key individuals to voice their priorities. Our engagements will be advertised in advance or as ‘pop-up’ events when possible. We will involve the community through social media, sharing enforcement actions and results to build trust. This community-directed activity will demonstrate our commitment to working for them. We will work with the University of Lincoln who will use academic methodologies to analyse engagement and how we can improve our reach in hard to hear communities.

County Lines

Operation Fortify - we will seek out and protect those who are being exploited by county lines drugs gangs, making it difficult for the lines to be set up and stay within our community. Enforcement against those involved in the gang and partnership support for those being ‘cuckooed’ (where an address is taken over so a base for dealing can be established) will help tackle this scourge on our market towns.

Operation Signature

This is the force’s initiative to identify and support vulnerable victims of fraud in Lincolnshire. In partnership with the force’s Crime Prevention Department, we will work to provide advice and signposting to those who are targets victims of fraud. Those who are a victim of this crime type are often isolated and unable to acknowledge they are victims. We will work on prevention and signposting to partners to ensure victims have suitable onwards support to prevent them being continually targeted by those who would seek to exploit their vulnerabilities.

Working in partnership with

• Lincolnshire Police and Crime Commissioner
• South and East Lincolnshire Community Safety Partnership
• Police Federation
• Boston Borough Council
• what3words
• Spike Aware UK
• Oscar Kilo
• Home Office UK Border Agency
• University of Lincoln
• Lincolnshire Resilience Forums
• Just Lincolnshire
• Lincolnshire County Council