City of Lincoln policing plan

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

Download a PDF version of this plan.

Foreword

Part of what makes this city special is its historic charm by day and lively pubs and clubs by night, which means that the city centre and surrounding areas can be busy and bustling.

This promotes great atmosphere and it’s something all of us who live in Lincoln love, but we also know that with such busy zones there come policing challenges we have to meet to ensure you are safe. Alongside that, we have suburban areas spreading out from the centre, and some of the major road networks connecting the county.

Policing this is a huge challenge, but one that both of us as neighbourhood policing Inspectors are happy to rise to, assisted by four sergeants who oversee their teams.

Five of our wards identified as having higher risk levels benefit from two assigned Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) per ward. Most policing activities take place at the tri-service station on South Park Avenue, where police, fire, and ambulance teams share both the building and facilities, and also make use of the smaller stations located in local areas. A big part of neighbourhood policing is collaborating closely with local organisations and agencies to solve problems – and where we can, prevent people entering the criminal justice system, or help to steer them away from offending.

This is where neighbourhood policing plays its part. The teams have strong links with local authorities, health services, charities, business groups, and community groups to name a few of our partners, which all help us deal effectively with crime and disorder issues, solve short-term and long-term problems, and support victims.

We know that by forming these partnerships and tackling root causes of crime, we can make the city safer.

In addition to response officers, South Park Station hosts investigative teams responsible for addressing volume crime, serious offences, and crimes involving children and vulnerable individuals.

In 2025, the aim remains to make Lincoln a safe place to live, work, and visit by continuing to collaborate diligently with the community and other agencies.

Inspectors Jon Birkin and Dan Gilmore
Neighbourhood Policing – Lincoln

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, setting community priorities across the district in consultation with you dealing with the things that really matter in your area.

We will inform

We will communicate 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 policing initiatives.

Stop crime and ASB

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

Drugs supply

The supply of drugs underpins many crime and disorder problems. We will ensure that we gather and develop intelligence to ensure that we can prosecute the suppliers of drugs and provide support to users helping them reduce dependency on drugs and psychoactive substances (formally known as ‘legal highs’). We will target those who seek to exploit the most vulnerable in our communities including through effective action against County Lines and other supply methods into the city.

We will work with housing partners and others to make Lincoln a hostile environment for drug dealers. We will use the full range of legislation available to us including ancillary orders to do this.

Wherever we can, we will share our activity with communities so they are reassured that we do take action and are encouraged to report concerns to the police. We will offer a range of methods to contact us including working with Crimestoppers to ensure anonymous reporting is available to all.

Anti-social behaviour

Anti-social behaviour covers a range of different conduct which is usually judged by the impact on the victim or the community.

We will work to prioritise that anti-social behaviour which impacts on victims repeatedly; victims who are vulnerable; perpetrated by the same individual or group of individuals repeatedly or areas where there is an ongoing problem.

By working with City of Lincoln Council, housing providers and others we will use a staged approach to ensure that conduct is addressed at an early stage to prevent problems manifesting. We will use the range of legislation available to us including support of the Public Space Protection Orders that are in place and the use of dispersal notices.

We will maximise opportunities to educate young people to understand the impact of behaviour on would-be victims. We will do this through education sessions with primary and secondary school students and through outreach work during patrols.

Evening and night time economy

Lincoln has a thriving nightlife, with pubs, clubs and restaurants attracting local residents, people from neighbouring towns and villages, and visitors from further afield.

Whilst the city is an incredibly safe place in the evening, we know that there a hundreds if not thousands of people visiting the city centre.

The consumption of alcohol and drugs heighten the risk of violence and sexual offences, and we will work to reduce the chance of these offences occurring.

Our concerns extend beyond these immediate issues, and we will work with British Transport Police and transport providers to ensure that routes to and from the city are safe, and that our presence is felt through the days and afternoons leading into those busy evenings.

A visible policing presence will deter and prevent crime alongside City of Lincoln Council Safety Wardens and Street Pastors. We will use problem-solving methodology and safeguarding to make sure the most vulnerable are protected.

We will continue to work with other agencies and organisations to address short-term issues and make longer-term plans to prevent and detect crime.

Retail crime

We understand the impact that retail crime has not only on the businesses themselves but on those that work within that sector and for the wider community.

We will work with the business community including Lincoln Business Improvement Group (BIG) and individual shops to make Lincoln a more difficult place to commit crime, particularly acquisitive crime including by supporting ShopWatch schemes across the city.

We will collaborate with partners to support victims and will use ancillary orders and other legislation to prevent offending.

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.

County lines

In addition to our general work to address drug supply in the city, we will focus specifically on County Lines. We recognise that County Lines seek to exploit our communities to profit from the supply of drugs.

We will always prioritise the prosecution of those organising and supplying drugs and protecting those being exploited.

We will use every available avenue of information and intelligence to help us target those offenders and use the best techniques of disruption. We will work with other agencies, other police forces and the national taskforce to do this.

The act of cuckooing and other exploitation of young and vulnerable people will be investigated, prosecuted and prevented. Through education and contextual safeguarding, we will help communities be vigilant against the risks of county lines and help become part of the solution.

University residents

Residents of our two universities significantly increase the population throughout the year. We will support both universities to help students settle and reduce their chance of being a victim of crime or becoming involved in any avenue of crime or disorder.

We will ensure that we have strong methods of engagement with all students. Through this engagement we will raise awareness to reduce vulnerability to crime including sexual offences. We will also work with both universities to take a problem-solving approach to seasonal demand such as Freshers’ Week.

For students at the University of Lincoln, this is achieved through a dedicated officer funded by the University itself and based in the Student Wellbeing Department of the campus.

Child exploitation

The exploitation of children in any form is one of the most serious yet hidden types of crime in our communities. Offenders will exploit children for either their own gain or to benefit organised crime activity with exploitation ranging from sexual offences, commission of crime, and labour exploitation.

We will identify offenders and locations and target our resources to those as well as identifying victims and ensuring they are properly safeguarded. We can only be effective with any of this if we collaborate with partner agencies such as Children’s Services, Trading Standards (Lincolnshire County Council), City of Lincoln Council, and Children’s Society, as well as the community.

In order to prevent further offences, we will work with others to implement effective safeguarding and will promote a local HotelWatch scheme to help make Lincoln a hostile environment for those seeking to exploit children.

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.

Rough sleeping

Lincoln has a well-established partnership with other agencies to support those who find themselves homeless or sleeping on our streets. We will continue to contribute to this partnership and support the complex needs that usually lead to sleeping rough.

We understand that the presence of rough sleeping in the city centre and within communities can be unsettling for residents and we will work to address the root causes of homelessness and use the law proportionately to tackle anti-social behaviour and crime.

Vulnerable/Repeat callers

We will work to engage 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 crisis regularly requires police intervention.

We will seek the full range of support available from other agencies and will only use the criminal justice system when all other avenues of support have been exhausted.

Vulnerability in the evening economy

Whilst the majority of people experience a perfectly safe and enjoyable evening, it can provide an environment that leaves some vulnerable to criminality. We will seek to stop those who commit sexual offences against those who may be vulnerable through drink or drugs and will help would-be victims by raising awareness of things such as drink-spiking and other safety advice.

We will work with businesses operating within the city to create a culture where predatory behaviour towards women and girls is not tolerated. We will also do this in partnership with Evening Wardens, Street Pastors and PubWatch and will also seek to enhance contextual safeguarding by working with other agencies such as the Children’s Society.

Working in partnership with

• Bishop Grosseteste Students' Union
• University of Lincoln
• Lincolnshire County Council
• City of Lincoln Council
• CrimeStoppers
• Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue
• Lincolnshire Police and Crime Commissioner
• Lincoln Business Improvement Group
• Spike Aware UK
• Pub Watch
• YMCA Lincolnshire
• Safer Lincolnshire Partnership
• NHS Lincolnshire
• Lincolnshire Resilience Forum
• Just Lincolnshire
• The Children's Society
• Probation Service
• Security and Vulnerability Initiative
• Lincolnshire Recovery Partnership