Agenda and minutes
PDF 149 KBVenue: Council Chamber, Hackney Town Hall, Mare Street, London E8 1EA. View directions
Contact: Tom Thorn
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Apologies for Absence Minutes: 1.1 Cllr Etti had sent apologies for lateness. |
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Urgent Items / Order of Business Minutes: 2.1 There were no urgent items and the order of business was as laid out.
2.2 However, the Chair advised Members that under the any other business item at the end of the agenda consideration would be given to the Executive’s response to the Commission’s investigation into segregated cycle lanes. |
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Declarations of Interest Minutes: 3.1 There were no declarations of interest. |
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Evidence gathering for review - work and approach of Hackney's Integrated Gangs Unit Additional documents: Minutes: 4.1 Guests in attendance for this item were:
4.2 The Chair noted that during the scoping stages of its review looking at serious violence, the Commission had heard about the successes of the Hackney Integrated Gangs Unit in reducing gang violence in the borough.
4.3 This item was intended to build on that introduction to the Gangs Unit received in September. A number of partners and commissioned services operating within the unit were in attendance to talk and answer questions on their work.
4.4 She welcomed guests and thanked them for coming. She particularly wished to thank Samir and Damion from St Giles Trust. Samir and Damion had offered to talk at the meeting on their own journeys from being involved in gang related activity to now working to prevent others going down these paths.
4.5 There were two papers in support of this item. The first on pages 5 to 10 was intended to give an insight into the work of the IGU overall.
4.6 The second paper on pages 11 to 18 looked specifically at the work of the Youth Justice Service, which had officers based in the IGU. This had been requested to help the Commission explore what happened to young people involved with gang activity, after they reach 18, in terms of transitions from youth justice to adult probation services.
4.7 In terms of the format of the item the Chair said she would firstly ask Samir and Damion to speak on their experiences and their work, prior to Members being invited to ask questions.
4.8 Following that discussion, Officers would be asked to introduce the papers for this item which were available in the agenda packs. There would then be a second question and answer session.
4.9 Invited to make any opening points, Samir Khattab made the following substantive points:
· He had been invited to talk to the Commission about his life and his journey from his earlier days to where he was today. He was not a self-publicist and as such was generally sceptical around requests to talk about his own story. This said, he had agreed to the request in the hope that it would give benefit and purpose to the Commission’s work.
· He had grown up in West London where - in the wider environment -violence and drugs were visible. He had fallen into a culture involving these factors during his teenage years.
· There had been a culture where young people could feel pressure to establish a name for themselves, or to be able to name drop others. This ... view the full minutes text for item 4. |
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Evidence gathering for review - police resources to tackle serious violence Minutes: 5.1 Sue Williams, Central East Commander, Metropolitan Police Service, was in attendance for this item. She made the following substantive points: · Policing in Hackney had faced some significant recent challenges. This – tragically – had included the response to a number of murders.
· However, following the spike in violence, evidence did point to things being turned around. Levels of knife crime, knife crime involving young people aged up to 25, and gun crime, were all down. As a partnership, things were moving in the right way.
· She would give a brief summary of the different central units which had helped to deliver this improvement.
· The Violent Crime Taskforce was set up earlier this year, made up of local Met Officers. The Taskforce went around London providing support in areas where there was concern. Deployment was based on bids from boroughs / Basic Command Units (BCU), which were made on a day to day basis. The unit on a pan London level had delivered some strong outputs including 473 weapons seizures, 871 stop and searches and 838 vehicle searches. Hackney had received significant shares of the support from this unit meaning that many of these cases would have been delivered in the borough.
· To give reassurance around the deployment of this unit in the borough, the Central East Commander, Metropolitan Police Service wished to advise that all units received bespoke briefings on the Hackney context. All Officers in the unit wore body cameras in the interests of safeguarding officers and individuals.
· Another unit - Operation Venice - focused on making people safe from the threat of moped enabled crime. Some of these crimes had been perpetrated by people linked to gang activity.
· Road Transport Police came into the borough to perform patrols and to assist other operations.
· The Territorial Support Group was comprised of two elements. One of these was made up of teams deployed for periods of between 2 weeks and a month. The other – the Commissioners Reserve TSG – could be bid for by the boroughs / BCUs on a daily basis. These units had roles in responding to disorder and reducing priority crime.
· Centrally controlled armed response vehicles included Hackney in their patrols. These units held firearms and also Tasers and other non lethal weapons. Armed officers were also in place through operation Radian.
· A role of armed response vehicles and armed officers was to perform hard stops, where vehicles or people were stopped due to intelligence or information suggesting that weapons including guns may be in evidence. By way of providing assurance around the professionalism and standards practiced in these cases, community leaders including members of the Safer Neighbourhood Board were able to join these patrols.
· The BCU worked closely with Operation Trident to help tackle organised crime in the borough. This joint work had delivered tangible outcomes. The period between December 2017 and March 2018 had seen a spike in violence in the N16 area. A covert operation in response had resulted in 37 arrests, ... view the full minutes text for item 5. |
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Additional documents: Minutes: 6.1 Sue Williams, Central East Commander, Metropolitan Police Service, made the following substantive points to introduce this item:
· Police restructures leading to the establishment of BCU structures had been carried out to make operations more efficient and streamlined.
· The BCU model would see 32 boroughs supported by 12 operational units.
· It needed to be acknowledged that funding reductions had left the old individual borough model unsustainable, particularly in relation to the outer London boroughs.
· The BCU model had five strands:
o Emergency Response o CID investigations o Neighbourhoods o Safeguarding o Leadership and Governance
· Hackney’s Integrated Gangs Unit and the Gangs Taskforce were based within the CID element.
· She had delivered a restructure bringing significant (18) changes. The BCU model was giving greater flexibility to tackle serious violence; it allowed resources to be flexed between the two boroughs to deal with issues emerging in either one. The restructure had been based on the principle of learning best practice from both sides. An example was her recognition of the value of the co-located, borough-specific gangs unit which was in place in Hackney through its IGU. This learning had led to the installation of a similar arrangement in Tower Hamlets.
· The Neighbourhoods strand incorporated ward-based activities and focus on licensing and anti-social behaviour (ASB). Within the ASB aspect, there was a strong focus on drugs.
· ASB initiatives included work to implement an ASB Warning System in Hackney, which was in place in Tower Hamlets. This was better enabling action to be taken by the police and or partners when people were known to be involved in activities including drug dealing but where the police had been unable to catch them in act. In these cases information sharing with other partners including registered social landlords, better enabled family based issues to be tackled and for people to be aided out of criminality. There had been an 80% reduction in ASB in Tower Hamlets following implementation of the scheme there. MOPAC had identified the initiative as good practice.
· The Safeguarding strand was aimed at protecting the most vulnerable. This included young people suffering from child sexual exploitation and or exploited into county lines activities.
· On children and young people, the Police Cadets scheme was a very important tool to aid prevention and diversion. The police sought to engage students who schools had identified as being on the edge of criminality. The Cadets enabled young people to be directly involved with a range of operations, including test under age purchasing of alcohol.
· There was lots of commentary around stop and search. In Hackney, numbers had reduced. The borough also had a positive outcomes rate which was in the top third across the Met. 30% of Stop and Searches in Hackney had delivered positive outcomes compared to the 20% target. Only 4 Section 60s – orders which allowed officers to stop and search people without reasonable grounds criteria being in place – had been put in place in Hackney since October.
· In response to a question, ... view the full minutes text for item 6. |
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Minutes of the meetings of 13th and 21st November Additional documents:
Minutes: 7.1 The minutes of the meetings of the 13th and the 21st November were agreed as accurate records. |
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Living in Hackney Scrutiny Commission- 2018/19 Work Programme Additional documents: Minutes: 8.1 The Work Programme was noted. |
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Any Other Business Minutes: 9.1 The Chair pointed Members to the papers on their desks; the recommendations from the Commission’s report on segregated cycle lanes, and the Executive Member’s response to this. She advised that the response had been agreed at Cabinet in November.
9.2 She advised that Cllr Stops who was a Member of the Commission during its review, was in attendance to speak about the response.
9.3 Cllr Stops thanked the Chair. He said that he had a number of concerns with the response to the report. However, he wished to focus on recommendation 1, as stated below below:
· That the Council consults on and publishes a clearer criteria for deciding when segregated cycling provision should be used. · We understand the Council’s Transport Strategy to place the Council in a position to consider segregated cycling provision on main roads where it would be felt to improve the safety and comfort of cyclists, where some other types of intervention would not fully achieve this or are not practical, and where a range of other considerations (including interactions between bus users and cyclists and junction safety) can be effectively managed.
· This is the Commission’s understanding based on a number of paragraphs of the Cycling Plan section of the Council’s Transport Strategy.
· Paragraph 7.54 states that: “The Council is open and willing to examine proposals for segregated and semisegregated cycle lanes on principal roads but it will be considered on a case by?case basis ? taking into account concerns about: high collision rates at intersecting junctions where segregated lanes end; visual impact on the streetscape; interaction between bus users and cyclists at bus stops; and other competing demands for road space on Hackney’s busiest routes.” Paras 7.4 and 7.5 and the hierarchy of provision sets out that the Council will consider segregated cycle lanes in cases where a number of other intervention types are not appropriate, or do not achieve the full ‘clear safe space for cyclists’ principle.
· We appreciate that the segregated provision will not always be the most appropriate intervention and support the Council in their approach of considering it on a case by case basis.
· However, we also feel that the Council position could be made clearer in terms of the specific circumstances / criteria in which segregated provision should be delivered. For example this could include measures around road widths, traffic volumes (PCU), etc.
· We ask that the Council develops and consults on a clear criteria to be used to help determine where segregated provision should be used.
9.4 Cllr Stops said he was disappointed that this recommendation had not been accepted. He noted the explanation given for this was that each location had to be considered on a case by case basis, that it was unlikely that the Council could produce a clearer criteria nor to make it fully applicable to each location, and that instead the Council should continue to work with TfL and other boroughs and draw on growing London wide evidence in this area.
9.5 He ... view the full minutes text for item 9. |