Dumfries and Galloway Council’s Communities Committee will meet on Tuesday 24 January and will be asked to agree to a refocusing of the Community Safety Team.
The Community Safety Team is responsible for a plethora of roles to keep communities safe, clean and tidy including issuing fixed penalty notices for fly tipping, dog fouling and littering. As well as this, community safety officers patrol neighbourhoods of the region to keep vandalism and anti-social behaviour rates low. The Team was formed in 2012 and amalgamated community wardens, car park inspectors and the anti-social behaviour teams into one large team.
Councillors will hear at the meeting that the review received a significant level of support from everyone who participated in the review, and there was a clear consensus that the community safety team would benefit from a refreshed approach.
This will not lead to any loss of service for the public of the region though. In fact, the report lays out how the team will operate moving forward, with a larger emphasis being placed on deploying officers to hand out fixed penalty notices to dog foulers and fly tippers – both of these issues continually rank highly as issues that the public see as vital to address in the annual community safety survey.
The refreshed model of working will focus on 12 outward facing improvement actions as a way of working, and measuring how successfully the team is performing. These include adopting a risk-based approach and improving public awareness of the team as a community asset. The team will also focus on early intervention and prevention rather than trying to deal with problems as and when they occur.
Councillor Tom McAughtrie, who is Chairman of the Communities Committee welcomed the report ahead of the meeting. He said;
“This report details exactly how the community safety team will work in the future. These changes will benefit the residents of Dumfries and Galloway both in the short and longer term. By increasing our work with key partners and stakeholders we’ll be able to dedicate more resources to catching those who continue to throw rubbish away wherever they like and let their dogs foul on our streets and in our parks. I hope my fellow committee members endorse this report and look would like to place on record my thanks to the community safety team for the work they do.”
The full report can be found at; https://egenda.dumgal.gov.uk/aksdumgal/users/public/admin/kab53.pl?cmte=&type=M&arc=71&phase=two
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