Around 115 youngsters celebrated Halloween safely and with lots of fun, thanks to High Peak Borough Council and partners.
Staged by High Peak Community Safety Partnership and Buxton Safer Neighbourhood Team, the Teen Scene event was set up after a young person wrote a letter requesting an under 18s’ night in the town.
Young revellers enjoyed music and soft drinks during the celebration on Thursday 22 October. There were no reports of antisocial behaviour in Buxton that night, and alcohol testing wands revealed that no one was drinking inside the venue.
Said council antisocial behaviour co-ordinator Hannah Cocker: “We organised the event to address the wishes of the younger members of the community, and it really paid off as it helped keep the streets free from antisocial behaviour”.
The Teen Scene was so successful that the partnership is now looking to organise another event before the year end.
Whether it’s organising youth discos, briefing the local MP or advising pensioners on home security, there’s never a dull moment for the High Peak community safety team.
The team’s job is to ensure that the borough’s Community Safety Partnership is doing everything it can to tackle crime and the fear of crime, and to make the High Peak a safer place for all its residents, businesses and visitors. The team works very closely with Derbyshire Constabulary, Derbyshire County Council, Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service and a host of other partners.
The Community Safety Team organises diversionary activities for youngsters, develops projects to tackle violence and alcohol, takes steps to improve home and vehicle security, gives advice on community safety, and takes direct action to prevent crime.
Read on as Alena Canty, the Community Safety Manager, describes a typical working week in a borough which is relatively safe but still presents many challenges...
The usual Monday morning, checking e-mails and ‘phone messages to see what has happened over the weekend. Information is received from the police that one young man has breached his acceptable behaviour contract. We need to get a meeting set up quickly to address this so I get on the ‘phone to the school, the police, the young person and his mother to arrange a suitable date. It is frustrating news as his behaviour had improved dramatically.
Pleased to hear that, on Saturday night, the Glossop Safer Policing Team used the new alcoblow equipment that we funded to seize alcohol from several young people who were causing a nuisance in a public park.
My diary flashes up that the main task for today is to write a bid for funding to install CCTV cameras in Buxton and Gamesley. I need to get all the background information together to show the benefits of cameras in these locations. Don’t have much time though as today the team has booked the police drugs dog to visit a local secondary school. The headteacher said he suspected that four students were bringing drugs into school. We didn’t find any drugs but the dog’s presence will have resonated around the school and will have had a massive impact on anyone considering bringing drugs into school.
Tonight, High Peak Borough Council’s cultural services team is running the first organised “street sports” event in Hadfield. The partnership helps fund this event and works closely with cultural services to select the most appropriate areas. I hope that it goes down well with the young people of Hadfield.
The team was pleased to hear that the Hadfield street sports event went very will, attracting 28 young people. The police were pleased as hardly any calls for service were made during this event. The team is now looking at how this can be repeated.
Today we join forces with the council’s licensing officials and Derbyshire County Council trading standards to carry out a test purchasing operation to make sure that off-licences aren’t selling alcohol or tobacco to under 18s. We visited 15 premises in Glossop and, for the first time ever, no illegal sales were made. This was a great result, suggesting that our campaign discouraging alcohol sales to anyone who appears to be under 21 years is bearing fruit.
I’ve managed to get some work done on the bid but am starting to get anxious because we have a busy week ahead and the deadline is Friday.
Tonight the team has organised an alcohol-free disco, called a ‘Dry Night’, for Buxton teenagers aged 13 to 17 years. The event has taken a lot of planning involving partners such as the School, Derbyshire Youth Service, the local policing team and the local church. A Buxton nightclub will host the event. The evening was really busy with around 120 young people attending. Only two young people were turned away after they tested positive for alcohol with our alcoblows. A really encouraging night with no antisocial behaviour calls or criminal damage offences while the event was taking place. The team is now looking forward to the next under 18s’ club night and hopes it will be as successful. Hannah Cocker, our antisocial behaviour officer, is thinking of preparing thank you letters for all the agencies involved with the event, and is already planning the next one!
Today the team was contacted by New Mills Safer Neighbourhood Policing Team to confirm that the Payback Team had started work cleaning up a local graveyard. The community safety team had organised this through the Probation Service. The scheme involves offenders doing voluntary work to make reparation to the community. The team had become aware of a problem when local people complained about the graveyard being repeatedly damaged, and it was attracting unsavoury characters late into the night. We have agreed plans with the Probation Service for 39 Community Payback activities across the High Peak.
Later this morning we received a compliment from a member of the public stating how nice it was to see criminals paying back their debt to society. What a great start to the day!
Spent the rest of the morning completing the funding bids. I need to make them good as the funding is limited and open to bids from another seven local authorities across Derbyshire.
This afternoon the team has a stall in a local supermarket. Around 80 people paid us a visit, which wasn’t bad considering the weather was terrible! We distributed free property marking kits and outdoor security lamps (the ones that come on automatically at dusk and switch off at dawn), gave out community safety information and listened to any concerns. It was great that we were supported by the Derbyshire Fire Service providing fire safety advice and High Peak Community Housing, who were advising on accessing social housing. It is good to get out of the office and talk directly to local people about their concerns.
After tea, the team went down to Glossop to assist the police on a walkabout with MP Tom Levitt. Whilst on patrol he witnessed some nuisance behaviour and under age drinking. The MP was concerned that Section 27 of the Violent Crime Reduction Act could only demand that a person aged over 16 years leaves an area. He is going to ask Parliament if this could be reduced to 14 years. Fingers crossed!
Meanwhile Garry Staples, our Partnership Sergeant, was working five minutes down the road assisting Derbyshire Youth Service at an event in the park attended by around 220 young people. The initiative involved handing out glow sticks and street lanterns and playing games to discourage the young people from drinking.
Today the Beat Sweep has finally arrived, which is going to tie up much of our time. It will be a whole week of concentrated enforcement and diversion activity in one area. Following a “grot spot” walkabout with the local police and councillors, a number of areas were identified for litter and graffiti removal. The Council’s clean team now have 24 hours to remove the litter and fly tipping from the areas identified.
I concentrate on finishing the bids while Hannah and Garry send letters to all the off- licences, advising them of our next Dry Night, reminding them not to serve alcohol to any young person and warning that adults may be buying alcohol to give to young people.
Derbyshire County Council gets in touch regarding hazardous parking reported by local residents. The team had asked the County to investigate, and we are encouraged to hear that the County is considering using double yellow lines to alleviate the issues.
The meeting to look at the acceptable behaviour contract breach started positively with all those invited attending. You’re never sure whether the family will turn up and it can be frustrating to have to reschedule. Extra support was offered to the young man to help him stay out of trouble. I might try and get him on the Team Mates programme with a one-to-one adult mentor.
Fairfield in Buxton has its street sports event tonight, hopefully this will be as successful as Hadfield’s.
Phone call received from local hospital agreeing to participate in our Stop Violence Against Staff project. This has taken many months to come to fruition as there were concerns regarding data protection. This means that anyone under the influence of alcohol who assaults a member of the hospital staff will find themselves banned from all the pubs in the Pubwatch scheme. Team summoned to press call on this issue.
Finally get the bid written and submitted, it’s now a waiting game.