THE Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, Roger Hirst, is launching a £4 million (£3,953,923) locally funded scheme to improve public safety across Essex. The fund is open to all Essex Council Community Safety Partnerships and will target areas that suffer from anti-social behaviour, neighbourhood crime and where women and girls feel unsafe.  

The scheme follows the successful implementation of a national Safer Streets fund where the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, working with local councils, secured £3 million from central government to invest in making areas across Essex safer. This funding has been amplified by an additional £820,000 of funding from local partners.

Roger Hirst Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner said: “Crime is falling in Essex and is down 2.5% in the last twelve months. We are also seeing long term reductions in key types of crime including anti-social behaviour which is down by 60%, and homicide and burglary both of which have halved since 2016.”

“But we know we need to do more to continue to get crime down, support victims and protect the vulnerable. We also need to make sure that people feel safe in their communities and can go out and enjoy their lives without the fear of crime. We know that women and girls feel unsafe in certain areas of Essex and this is unacceptable.”

Harlow (2023) (£83,161 of local Safer Streets Funding plus £46,348 match funding)

The fundings focused on a proactive approach to identifying and tackling neighbourhood crime, Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG) and anti-social behaviour (ASB). Activity included: 

• Supplying equipment such as drones, CCTV, body-worn video and electric bicycles to support police and community safety teams. 
• Multi-agency community days of action, 
• ·outreach work with those with substance misuse issues, 
• support to the Knife Angel project (including knife crime awareness campaigns) 
• Serious violence and VAWG conference