North Area Local Policing Pledge
North Area
Our policing pledge is about delivering effective valuable policing, working with partners and communities to improve our service and your quality of life.
Our Pledge to you:
We will:
1. Always treat you fairly with dignity and respect ensuring you have fair access to our services at a time that is reasonable and suitable for you.
Area Commander
Performance within the North Area since April 2009 has been good with overall crimes currently showing a reduction of 7% compared to the same period last year. Additionally improved detection rates have been achieved. This is very welcome and underlines that the area remains a safe place to live. We remain committed to working with our diverse communities across the North Area to ensure we fully understand your needs. PACT meetings are invaluable in this process so we are sure we understand community needs. We will shortly be introducing street ‘floodlight’ PACT meetings as a way of improving our connection with communities. Your active involvement is encouraged.
Ch. Supt. Trevor Watson, North Area Commander
This is at the heart of everything we are trying to achieve within the North Area BCU, linking into our Neighbourhoods Policing Model , our Citizen Focus, and ultimately the vision, to provide the best possible policing service for the North area community.
2. Provide you with information so you know who your dedicated Neighbourhood Policing Team is, where they are based, how to contact them and how to work with them.
This is a key part of our delivery of our Neighbourhood Policing model - the way we conduct our core business. Neighbourhood teams across the North Area will use posters to assist in the publication of the work they do supported by our web site that provides details on the teams and other information that the you may need.
3. Ensure your Neighbourhood Policing Team and other police patrols are visible and on your patch at times when they will be most effective and when you tell us you most need them. We will ensure your team are not taken away from neighbourhood business more than is absolutely necessary. They will spend at least 80% of their time visibly working in your neighbourhood, tackling your priorities. Staff turnover will be minimised.
Neighbourhood Policing within the North area is well developed, with a ‘whole team’ approach across the area working towards the priorities identified by you alongside the key crime reduction issues identified through intelligence gathering and information provided by the community. This means the focus of all our efforts is to deal with the issues that matter to you.
Abstractions of officers on these teams is being kept to a minimum.
See Also
- Local Police
Find your local policing team.
4. Respond to every message directed to our Neighbourhood Policing Teams within 24 hours and, where necessary, provide a more detailed response as soon as we can.
Working with our HQ communications staff we seek to have appropriate processes in place to make sure that our Neighbourhood Teams can be contacted and that they will respond promptly to your request.
5. Aim to answer 999 calls within 10 seconds, deploying to emergencies immediately giving an estimated time of arrival, getting to you safely, and as quickly as possible. In urban areas, we will aim to get to you within 15 minutes and in rural areas within 20 minutes.
This is a current performance indicator for the force. The control room constantly monitor their performance in this area and are working with staff from the North area to ensure that we seek to deliver these standards consistently.
6. Attend (when needed) any incident relating to a priority or if you are vulnerable or upset within 60 minutes.
We are implementing a new call handling system which identifies local priorities to our call centre staff, ensuring that these are dealt with within the required period, and providing them with additional information regarding that issue. Where appropriate will also be happy to arrange appointments following the initial call. If you are vulnerable or upset, our staff are being trained to identify this, and to deal with you appropriately.
7. Arrange regular public meetings to agree your priorities, at least once a month, giving you a chance to meet your local team with other members of your community. These will include opportunities such as surgeries, street briefings which will be arranged to meet local needs and requirements.
Each of the North Area Neighbourhood Teams hold regular public meetings. These are usually held in conjunction with our partners. These will be advertised through local media and posters, details can also be found on this website. Where, following specific incidents a need is identified to hold a public meeting this will be responded to promptly.
8. Provide monthly updates on progress, and on local crime and policing issues. This will include the provision of crime maps, information on specific crimes and what happened to those brought to justice, details of what action we and our partners are taking to make your neighbourhood safer and information on how your force is performing.
Monthly updates and information about what has happened to those brought to justice and what we are doing to make the area where you live even safer are a standard feature of public meetings held by the Neighbourhoods teams, and are provided verbally, through posters and via the website. The media is also used to help publicise these messages at a local level.
Durham Constabulary will publicise our crime maps on this website which we will also use to provide information on our activities within the North Area.
(Please note that as Durham County is one of the safest places in England, there can be very little deviation in some of the low crime levels around the county. Small fluctuations in actual crime numbers of crimes can therefore result in high swings in the percentage changes. )
9. If you have been a victim of crime agree with you how often you would like to be kept informed of progress in your case and for how long. You have the right to be kept informed at least every month if you wish and for as long as is reasonable.
Ensuring user satisfaction and "follow up" satisfaction has recently been set as a measure of our success for 2009/10. We will strive to improve our performance in this area and will look closely at the process we utilise to see where improvements can be made.
10. Acknowledge any dissatisfaction with the service you have received within 24 hours of reporting it to us. To help us fully resolve the matter, discuss with you how it will be handled, give you an opportunity to talk in person to someone about your concerns and agree with you what will be done about them and how quickly.
This approach should already be taken by all managers within Durham Constabulary and the North Area when receiving a complaint from a member of the public regarding the service they have received.
What can you do?
You can help us improve your neighbourhood by volunteering some of your time as a Community Volunteer, as a Special Police Constable, by joining a Neighbourhood Watch Scheme or by attending and participating in the Partnership and Community Together (PACT) meetings.
