Who are we, and what do we do?
We are responsible agencies who have been brought to work closer together by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.
Previous to that, we operated independantly from each other on a great many things, reducing crime and disorder being one of them. It was this unjoined working that led to the Act being passed in 1998, and Act which required us to form a group, a Partnership. The generic term for this is a CDRP, or Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership, of which there are more than 370 across England and Wales. We decided to call OUR CDRP the 'Community Safety Partnership', and our logo is on the right hand side of this page.
To get a better understanding of the work we do, it's best to realise which agencies sit around the Partnership table. We have the Local Authority, the Police, the Police Authority (they are different!), the Fire Service, the Primary Care Trust, and from 2010 we now have another statutory partner, the Devon and Cornwall Probation Area. It so happens that we have always invited Probation to our meetings, and we were one of the first Partnerships to invite the Police Authority as well, something which then became statutory. Basically, if you take into account all those agencies sat around a table at one time, then you have a better understanding of what it is we are about. We discuss issues we've had here locally, we discuss potential issues, and we look at ways of making the islands altogether safer and healthier, but the primary reason has always been a focus on reducing Crime and Disorder. That is what the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 focused on, making local authorities take more responsibility for crime issues in their community. Until then it had basically been the role of the Police to protect communities, but it was thought that pooling information and resources with the local authority would make a real difference to communities, and also improve working relations between the two agencies. When a reasonsed debate was had on the formation of a Partnership, it was decided that the Fire Service and Primary Care Trust could also benefit from this meeting, to share ideas and resources and help each other problem-solve. As you can see from the crime stats on this site, it's made a real difference here, and also across many parts of the country.
Funding for Partnership projects is not found from individual budgets, it is found from grant funding from central government, namely the Home Office. This funding enables the projects to come to life and also means that the Partnership itself owns projects, so there are no wrangles or disputes around ownership of projects or materials or such like. This funding has been around £40,000 to £50,000 per year on the islands over the last 10 years or so, but funding has been irregular in terms of time-lines, so we often only have 3 years of promised funding the it has been reassessed. Obviously, we are not then in a position to 'save' money for large projects, and we are usually urged to spend our money in the space of a year. So this means that we have to focus on small projects usually.
