Safer Buckinghamshire Plan 2020-2023

Using all the information available we have developed a set of priorities. They focus on the known causes of crime and also the concerns of people in Buckinghamshire:

• Helping communities to become more resilient. We will target support to those communities experiencing greater levels of crime and anti-social behaviour.
• Protecting vulnerable adults and children. We will work with them to reduce their chances of experiencing or committing serious crime, especially violent crime, or being exploited.
• Addressing the impact of drugs, alcohol and poor mental health. We will work to reduce levels of crime and harm linked to these factors.
• Tackling domestic violence and abuse. We will focus on early intervention and improving services for victims.
• Dealing with offending. We will act as early as possible to prevent first time offending. We will bring offenders to justice and work hard to stop re-offending.

We have written a plan to carry out the key actions linked to these priorities. We will set up clear measures so that we can track the delivery and impact of our plan.

We will use our funds, including the Community Safety grant from the Police and Crime Commissioner, to support these priorities. Our focus will be on early interventions.

In the coming year, we are expecting to take responsibility for some new legal duties relating to domestic abuse and dealing with serious violence.

We will review these priorities and our delivery plan every year. We will consider what effect our actions are having and whether we need to make any changes.

The five priorities have a number of underlying themes. These will be addressed in our delivery plan:

• Traumatic experiences can have a long lasting effect on a person. They can increase the chances of them becoming a victim of crime or carrying out a crime. Experiencing domestic violence and abuse and negative childhood experiences are clearly linked to personal wellbeing in the future and also have implications for the wider community.
  
• People with disabilities and people suffering from poor mental health are more vulnerable to becoming victims of crime. You are also more likely to experience poor mental health if you are a victim of crime.
  
• Supporting vulnerable people and challenging hate, prejudice and extremism.
  
• Supporting communities to come together to make their environments safer. The introduction of 16 Community Boards across Buckinghamshire provides a new opportunity to work with communities to address their community safety concerns.
  
• Assessing the impact on Covid-19 on crime and take steps to reduce its impact on crime and related harm.