This meeting of the Communities and Public Protection Scrutiny Committee included presentations from the Young Adults Independent Advisory Group (YA/YIAG) and from the Council's Trading Standards Team. The Committee were also scheduled to receive an update on the Citizen's Assembly on Neighbourhood Policing that took place in February and March 2024.

Citizens' Assembly on Neighbourhood Policing

The most significant item on the agenda was a report on the Citizens' Assembly on Neighbourhood Policing. The report detailed how the Assembly was convened in response to the Casey Review, which, in the words of the report:

exposed serious failings and made clear that Londoners’ voices were missing in the way they were policed.

The Assembly brought together 45 residents, to consider the question:

How can the police build trust with all communities and make Waltham Forest feel safer?

The Assembly generated ten recommendations for change which were summarised in the report, along with a description of how the Council planned to work with the Police, residents and the voluntary and community sector to enact the Assembly's recommendations. The report also invited the Committee to share their insight about how to improve the borough's ward panels.

Trading Standards Update

The Committee were scheduled to receive a presentation from the Trading Standards Team about their work in relation to community safety.

The report detailed the work of the Trading Standards team, noting that they had to deal with 3,200 service requests in the previous year. The report described various pan-London projects that the Trading Standards Team had participated in. These included:

• Operation Sceptre: A national campaign to reduce the sale of knives to people under the age of 18.
• Operation Joseph: A project to reduce the sale of illegal vapes and the sale of vapes to children.
• Operation CeCe: A National Trading Standards initiative, in partnership with His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), to reduce the sale of illegal tobacco products.
• A cost of living project to ensure that retailers were displaying prices correctly.
• Operation Redditus: A London wide project to empower private renters.
• A project to monitor the sale of corrosives¹ to people under the age of 18.

The report included two case studies that describe how the Trading Standards team intervened to stop the sale of unsafe products.

The report also summarised the Trading Standards Team's work to prevent the sale of age restricted goods to children, their inspection of businesses that sell fireworks, and their role in regulating the safety of consumer goods.

Youth Engagement

The Committee were scheduled to receive an update from the YA/YIAG and Streetbase.

The Scrutiny Report

The Committee were scheduled to receive the Scrutiny Report.

The Scrutiny Report provides an update on the Council's progress on recommendations and actions made at prior meetings of the Committee. The report also includes details about the Committee's forward plan, which is a list of the topics that the Committee plans to scrutinise in future meetings.

The report included the Committee's forward plan which listed the topics already scheduled for discussion at future meetings of the committee.

The report also included an update on the Committee's previous actions and recommendations, and the Council's response to them. The Committee had previously asked questions about the Council's work on PREVENT. The PREVENT strategy is:

part of the UK's counter-terrorism strategy, known as CONTEST. It aims to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism.

The Committee had also previously recommended that the Council expand its work on Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG), review the use of CCTV in the borough, and consider the impact of the reduction in the number of Volunteer Police Cadets. The report included responses from officers on each of these points.