The Communities and Public Protection Scrutiny Committee met to discuss the Waltham Forest Community Safety Partnership, and to review the committee's scrutiny report. The agenda included an invitation for the committee to review the draft forward plan for the 2025/26 municipal year and make recommendations. Councillor Jack Phipps, was scheduled to chair the meeting.

Waltham Forest Community Safety Partnership

The committee was scheduled to discuss a report outlining the redesign of SafetyNet, the Waltham Forest Community Safety Partnership (CSP).

A CSP is required by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which requires local authorities, police, fire and rescue services, health services, and probation services to work together to reduce crime, disorder, anti-social behaviour, substance misuse and reoffending.

The report stated that the SafetyNet structure had become too large, making roles and responsibilities difficult to manage. The review aimed to create an efficient partnership framework for the CSP to carry out its duties effectively.

The review process focused on four main aspects:

• Lead and Guide: Ensuring the right people are in the meetings and ensuring clear accountability and performance management.
• Assess: Ensuring relevant information sharing and data analysis, informing priorities and delivery across the whole partnership structure.
• Plan: Redefining the purpose of each tier within the partnership structure ensuring accountability throughout, produce terms of reference for all tiers.
• Deliver: Reviewing the current structure and its effectiveness, communication and performance.

The proposed changes to the CSP included:

• Strategic (boroughwide): Changes to membership and meeting structure to ensure synergy with core partnership functions and strategic oversight. The board would be structured to have a minimum of four meetings per year to focus on assessment, planning, and delivery.
• Thematic (boroughwide) Sub-groups: Clear thematic sub-groups reflecting priorities identified in the strategic needs assessment and national priorities, such as violence against women and girls (VAWG), serious violence, cohesion, combating drugs, and antisocial behaviour.
• Local Delivery, Problem Solving and Case Management: Reviewing the relationship between Problem Solving Partnership Meetings (PSPM), Anti-Social Behaviour Risk Assessment Conference (ASBRAC), Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC), and how individual case management and localities are managed.

The new priorities for the refreshed LBWF CSP were identified as:

• Keeping people safe from violence and exploitation
• Reducing antisocial behaviour, crime and disorder
• Promoting community cohesion
• Ending violence against women and girls
• Protecting communities from drug and alcohol related harm

The report concluded that the new CSP structure would offer greater synergy across all aspects of the structure and in the delivery of the priorities.

Scrutiny Report

The committee was also scheduled to review the scrutiny report, including the draft forward plan for the 2025/26 municipal year, the action tracker from previous meetings, and the recommendation tracker.

The action tracker captures all actions required of officers by the committee at the previous scrutiny meeting and provides an update on progress. Actions are specific tasks requested by the committee for officers to complete, such as providing information not included in reports but of use to the committee's work.

The recommendation tracker captures all recommendations made by the committee at the previous scrutiny meeting, regarding how services should change or improve.

Key decisions that were scheduled to be discussed included the Citizen's Assembly on Neighbourhood Policing: A year on.

The committee was scheduled to discuss potential items for the upcoming year and ideas for a themed review.