Summary of
Respect for Nottingham
Delivering cleaner, safer, greener neighbourhoods
As of November 2005
Summary
Delivered in partnership, Respect for Nottingham was the response of Nottingham City Council to comments of city residents during the 2003 Local Election. Residents wanted cleaner, greener, safer neighbourhoods and through Respect for Nottinghamthe City Council has helped to ensure this happened.
In the two and a half years since the scheme was launched Nottingham has seen ‘obvious and visible reductions’ in Begging, Street Prostitution, Street drug dealing and Anti-social behaviour, in addition to a noticeable improvement in the cleanliness and quality of the environment.
Respect for Nottingham reflects the community that created it, it works hard to ensure that streets are clean and problems are dealt with, but expects residents to play their part in ensuring Nottingham remains a place you can be proud to live.
The Strategy has four basic strands: Enforcement – taking action and reassuring the public that anti-social behaviour will not be tolerated, Empowerment – Supporting individuals and groups to take control of their own areas by increasing respect clean up campaigns, establishing telephone hotlines to report problems, and through a commitment to witness protection. Quality Services – With clear customer focus, through the investment in staff and resources that ensure an excellent job. Communicating – Sharing our ambitions and expectations and telling people what’s been achieved.
Where Respect for Nottingham has been at its most successful is through changing behaviour. Nottingham has changed the culture of giving directly to beggars through hard hitting publicity campaigns, used fixed penalty notices and publicity to make it clear that littering and fly-tipping in our city was unacceptable, and focussed unwanted attention on kerb crawlers.
Respect for Nottingham has also been joined by a range of supporting projects that have added to the impact: two 100 Day Clean Up campaigns, the City’s Respect for Transport strategy, and Safe in Nottingham that both tackles bad behaviour, and builds on Nottingham’s commitment not to accept it through ‘Nottingham Stand’s Together’.
Respect for Nottingham has been about showing the people of Nottingham that we are as proud of their City as they are, and where there are problems we’ll sort them out together.
How were Councillors involved, and what was significant about their involvement?
The Respect for Nottingham scheme was born out of the strong campaigning and persistent role as champions of local people by Councillors that has kept Nottingham a Labour City. Respect for Nottingham is a project that tackles the issues that local residents have told their local Councillors they want tackling.
There are high levels of recognition in the scheme, and it’s always the first thing mentioned on the door step.
Why was this project innovative?
Nottingham has been at the very forefront of the drive on the cleaner and safer agenda. New powers have been embraced and enforced quickly and effectively. We have both pioneered and learnt from best practice elsewhere.
The results that Respect for Nottingham has delivered are testament to just how new and innovative the scheme is. Key organisations are involved in joint tasking and sharing resources. And public recognition of the initiative is high - simply because it’s such a proven success. The focus on delivering results combined with the accountability to local people makes Respect for Nottingham is a key factor in its success.
What has the project achieved?
2003-2005 Respect for Nottingham has achieved:
85% reduction in begging
80% reduction in street prostitution
Increased enforcement action – Increase in ASBO’s issued to over 110 in 2005 (compared to 8 in 2003)
1000 Fixed penalty notices for environmental offences
11,000M² of graffiti removed
Reduced the number of people with directly affected by ASB by 40% (72% March 2004 – 32% September 2005)
Joint working with the police has delivered:
50% reduction in ASB on Broxtowe estate since August 2005
36% result in alcohol related violence through Operation Crunch
Reduction in firearms incidents of nearly a third between 2003 (440) and 2004 (311)
Respect for Nottingham
The Strategy
The aim of the Respect for Nottingham Strategy is to clean up the city’s streets, take an uncompromising stand against begging, street prostitution and drug dealing and restore civic pride in the city.
The objectives are to achieve obvious and visible reductions in:
- Begging by January 2004
- Street drug dealing by April 2005
- Street prostitution by December 2004
- Anti-social behaviour in local neighbourhoods by April 2005
and
- To create a noticeable improvement in the cleanliness and quality of the environment by September 2004.
Multi-Agency Task Groups were established in October 2003 to tackle each of these priorities. The work of the Task Groups and some of their achievements are detailed below:
Begging
• Intensive case working of the city’s most problematic and persistent beggars to targets offenders both in terms of their support needs and for civil and criminal enforcement.
• High impact publicity campaign to discourage the public from direct giving.
Achievements
83% reduction in begging
Drugs
Redirection of enforcement focus towards street level dealing and towards key inner city areas through Police and City Council funded initiative; Operation Stealth.
Redirection and prioritisation of key housing and drug treatment policies to tackle the underlying drivers of drug related anti-social behaviour.
Achievements
• Significant increase in arrests for drug supply. (Over 400 directly attributable to Respect for Nottingham initiative).
• Decrease in arrestees testing positive from 60% to 48% over last 6 months.
• Decline in residents identifying drug dealing as a problem by 11%
Street Prostitution
• Multi-agency Kerb-Crawling Task Force established in June 2004 to work in key areas.
• Significantly increased capacity for voluntary organisations assisting women to exit.
• High impact publicity campaign targeting kerb-crawlers.
Achievements
Since their creation in June, the Kerb Crawling Task Force have already arrested twice the number of kerb crawlers that were arrested in the whole of last year.
An additional 201 contacts made with active street prostitutes by support services assisting prostitutes to make sustainable life changes.
Envirocrime
Increased enforcement action to tackle littering, flyposting, graffiti, flytipping through the use of, for example, Mobile CCTV, out of hours enforcement action, a Graffiti Reward Scheme and the issuing of Fixed Penalty Notices.
Innovative use of Anti-Social Behaviour legislation as demonstrated by the granting of an ASBO for Flyposting.
Improving the performance of front line services. For example, the 100 Day Clean Up Campaign.
Achievements
Significant increase in customer satisfaction as recorded in a recent survey of over 1000 residents.
Anti- Social Behaviour in Local Neighbourhoods
• Creation of 4 dedicated multi-agency Anti-Social Behaviour Task Forces by September 2004.
• Introduction of 40 additional Neighbourhood Wardens.
• Plans for the creation of a centralised Anti-Social Behaviour Unit which will co-ordinate a multi-agency response to all anti-social behaviour.
Achievements
Task Forces were established by September 2004 and are beginning to have an impact.
There are other progress reports -
[Summary based on notes written in November 2005;
Further details based on notes written in November 2004;
web page reviewed 2006-01-28]
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