Rochdale police column: Response to Milnrow and Newhey crime survey

Date published: 28 May 2019

Inspector Robert MacGregor, of the Rochdale East Neighbourhood Policing Team, on what the police are doing to tackle local issues across the borough.

Last week we asked for residents of Milnrow and Newhey to complete a survey which asked questions about safety, the community, and perceptions of crime in the area.

We had 492 responses to that survey in four days which has given us a good understanding of the issues and feeling in the area.

Some of the responses were as expected, and others were surprising, but all will be extremely helpful for the neighbourhood officers covering the villages to identify areas where there is work to be done.

The survey covers quite a few interesting points and I want to share the results with you here. I will cover half of the points in this column and the other half next week.

I will also briefly describe some observations about the results, and the changes that PC Stephen Hutchinson intends to introduce over the coming months to respond to the issues raised.

The response to Question 3 is cause for some concern as the number of residents feeling unsafe after dark is higher than those in other comparable neighbourhoods where we have also done surveys. One of the interesting features of this result is that whilst people report feeling unsafe after dark, it is not a perception based on their own experience of crime.

The responses to Question 8 show that the majority of residents completing the survey have not been victims of crime in the last twelve months. The problem this perception of being unsafe creates is that law-abiding, decent people are likely to avoid going out after dark which then means fewer of our community are present to act as a deterrent to those who intend to commit opportunistic crime.

In turn this leaves our villages without a ‘capable guardian’ when a potential criminal considers whether to commit a crime. A ‘capable guardian’ is one of the key crime prevention elements described in criminology.

PC Hutchinson is supporting the Milnrow and Newhey Street Watch, which will launch on 1 June. This scheme encourages residents to patrol in their community, not to ‘fight crime’, but in the spirit of good citizenship by meeting and building links with neighbours, and to report any quality of life issues such as graffiti, noise nuisance, ASB or similar so that these can be nipped in the bud before they escalate to more serious offences.

I hope that it will also mean that where residents are out after dark that they will occasionally see these volunteers and know that there are people looking out for them. Any would-be criminals will also see volunteers patrolling the area and will know that this is a community who care and look out for each other, the risk of being seen and caught in an area like this is higher and these would-be criminals will instead choose a target where the reward is the same and the risk of apprehension is lower.

I have said before how important I think this scheme is for the neighbourhood and, if you have not done so already, please join the Facebook page ‘M&N Resident Watch’.

Question 5 is another area of concern as the majority of respondents do not believe the Neighbourhood Officers are responsive to the needs of the community. This should be an area where we can make massive improvements over the coming months.

We have two points to address – firstly, we need to properly understand what the neighbourhood’s needs are, and secondly, we need to make sure that where we are doing work to address those needs that we are publicising it.  At the moment, I am not convinced that we are doing either of these very well.

Child sexual exploitation, missing children, domestic abuse, and burglary are all priorities for me and the Milnrow and Newhey Neighbourhood Team spend their working days concentrating on these offences which cause the greatest harm.

However, I suspect that the issues which respondents to the survey are thinking of are probably issues that are generally seen as ‘less serious’ but which give a sense of general lawlessness and disorder, such as driving offences, anti-social behaviour, persistent noise nuisance, criminal damage and the like.

I cannot direct the Neighbourhood Officers to forget missing children and to concentrate their efforts on noise nuisance, and I don’t think anyone in the community would expect them to either. However, we do need to do a better job of homing in on the number one priority concerning the community and explain what we are doing about that problem.  

We used to ask residents to vote on local priorities in PACT Meetings but, even as a Neighbourhood PC years ago, I never felt the priorities that were set (I had more than one row with one very excitable resident over whether dog-fouling should be the number one policing priority on my beat) really were reflective of what was causing angst in the wider community.

Again, PC Hutchinson has spoken to me about how we can be more responsive, and focusing on the areas that matter most to villagers.

At the moment an online monthly vote is the current suggestion and following that, updates both in Rochdale Online and on social media to explain how we have addressed the issues that matter the most to you. In terms of understanding the issues ongoing in the community I want to see more localised neighbourhood meetings, covering specific streets rather than the whole of Milnrow and Newhey to understand what problems are causing people concern in their own neighbourhood.

We have had significant cuts to police numbers across Greater Manchester over the last decade, but I don’t want that to constantly be an excuse for not doing the best we can. I have villagers that want to make their area a better place, local elected members who have always offered their full support to help us, and staff in the council who are working with us more closely than ever.

With that support, there are some simple changes we can make which can have a really positive impact on the community in Milnrow and Newhey – we will not be able to solve every problem, and any improvements are likely to be incremental, but I believe that the residents of Milnrow and Newhey are naturally strong supporters of the police and we need to make sure that whilst we continue to deal with the crimes causing the greatest harm, that we still dedicate time to dealing with the issues that are leading to the community feeling unsafe walking the streets after dark.

The officers on the neighbourhood team already do some brilliant work to try and improve the neighbourhood but we can do more – and when we are doing this work, we need to get better at publicising it.

I will cover the remaining areas of the survey in the next column.

Thank you as always for your support.