Beacon Council Initiatives

Beacon Council

Some successful initiatives

The three councils have put together an impressive package of community safety measures to target rural crime hotspots and reduce fear of crime within communities. Innovative projects include: -

• Mobile police stations called the "bobby bus". Visitors' book comments demonstrate the bus's success
• Bogus callers - call a helpline to check the identity of unexpected callers
• Validate - proof of age cards for young people to be used for purchasing age-related goods and services
• Message in a Bottle - recording name, doctor's name, illnesses such as angina and two names of people to contact in an emergency. This information is kept in a bottle in the fridge
• EPIC - emergency personal information cards, complementing the Message in a Bottle system
• Safe child - what primary school children should do when parted from their parents
• Safer estates - the Council uses its landlord powers to reduce crime and disorder by Council tenants
• Secured by design - a scheme to bring crime prevention into the planning of new developments
• Domestic violence linkline - phones to help people feel less alone
• Watch schemes - for rural areas. In addition to Neighbourhood Watch there is Horse Watch, Boat Watch, Shop Watch and Farm/Rural Watch.

Initiatives are developed, piloted and improved by an individual council before adoption by the other two. This approach minimises costs and greatly increases the volume of high quality initiatives that can be delivered in a given period of time. A particularly important element of the Beacon bid was the breadth of the proactive partnership which included the three councils, Police, Neighbourhood Watch, Social Services, Youth organisations, Probation Service, Fire Service, Racial Equality Service, Drug and Alcohol Team, Councillors and many more. The judges were particularly impressed by this strong partnership approach.