Communities, Equality and Local Government Committee

CELG(4)-06-11 : Paper to Note : Paper 4

Safer Communities for You

Overview

Safer Communities for You (SC4U) is an innovative approach to the realignment and rebranding of the current Dyfed-Powys Crime Prevention Trust.  It retains the fundamental focus of the current Trust whilst taking the Trust to its next dimension in terms of working with communities and other partners to achieve its vision of – ‘Working to make our Communities Safer for You’.

A full Business Plan has been prepared and approved by both the Force Chief Officers and the Board of Trustees.

The long term vision (12 – 36 months) is for the organisation to become self - sufficient and sustainable, allowing for a decrease in the reliance on grant funding.  This will be achieved through the establishing a trading arm to ensure future economic sustainability in the face of declining public sector funding.  ‘Social Enterprise’ status is the long term vision that can be achieved by trading certain elements of its services, and securing approximately 50% of its income from trading activities.  It will remain a ‘not for profit’ organisation and all monies it makes will be reinvested into the ‘business’ to develop future crime and ASB prevention / reduction projects and initiatives, and keep the Trust sustainable.

From a financial perspective it is anticipated that income for the start of the financial year 2011/2012 will be received from grant income and will aim to cover the salaries of the Development Officer and the Admin and Finance Officer (first posts to be appointed to the new organisation) that will help to ‘pump prime’ the development of SC4U.  After the first financial year, it is anticipated that it will generate income through various means such as charging for services, generating funds via fundraising and donations & memberships.  This projected income would leave SC4U in a comfortable position at the end of the first financial year, ready to develop into the next financial year. 

This approach strategically aligns itself with the UK Coalition Governments thinking of the ‘Big Society’ by directly contributing to a number of their stated priorities, in particular:

1. Giving Communities more powers;

2. Encouraging people to take an active role in their communities;

3. Supporting co-ops, mutuals, charities and social enterprises.

This proposal also compliments the response by the Association of Chief Police Officers to the paper ‘Policing in the 21^st Century – Reconnecting People and the Police September 2010’ by encouraging volunteers to become actively involved in crime and ASB prevention (paragraph. 5.2.4) and develop better ways of working with the voluntary and community sector (paragraph 5.2.12’).  In this context this new brand of SC4U will draw on the solid foundations of the current Trust extending the reach of its heritage of ‘promoting crime [ASB] prevention, reducing the fear of crime and providing education and information on crime [ASB] prevention – thus engaging the force vision of ‘Safeguarding our Communities of Dyfed & Powys’.’