From Philip Virgo as Development Lead 

Please reply if you would like to join the development team

Creating more secure, resilient, socially, culturally and digitally inclusive communities

Neighbours by chance. Working together by choice

We make this a better place to live. Together. 

Background

Across England and Wales 90,000 Neighbourhood Watch volunteer organisers engage with 2.3 million households (9%) across England and Wales. In Lambeth it is under a thousand (.04%). Across the most of the country its scale and nature changed during Covid as street/estate groups helped look after vulnerable neighbours unable to access on-line services. That did not happen in Lambeth.

Instead Lambeth had a wide variety of community initiatives. Some survived and flourished. Others did not. These include Community Hubs and Neighbourhood Champions supported via the Voluntary Community Services team with a Resource Library and newsletter . The support network is currently being restructured after a well-attended consultation meeting on 27th March One of the common themes among those present was the need for improved information on who to contact for what 

Meanwhile the need for the complementary Neighbourhood Watch has increased because those being encouraged to go on-line are more likely to be texted, phoned or e-mailed by a fraudster than by a genuine health, welfare or support service. 

Neighbourhood Watch is based on co-ordinators, personally known to both their neighbours and the local police team. They provide a link between the street/estate whats-app/facebook group and the Alert System, used by 35 police forces, Get Safe On-line and Action Fraud and the basis of Met Alert (due this spring). In Lambeth if they are not themselves the “Street/Estate champion they are expected to be an administrator in the same whatsapp group. Their workload is much reduced, if households join and sign up to receive advice and guidance including alerts on frauds and scams. 

All Neighbourhood Watch Associations and Co-ordinators have been asked (letter agreed with Home Office and the National Police Chiefs Council) to contact their police single points of contact (locally that means the Safer Neighbourhood teams) to organise activities during Neighbourhood Watch week 2nd - 8th June.  

Alerts have been sent to all groups with suggestions for local projects/activities, including in support of three national exercises: Doorbell Detectives, Digital Voice (ensuring that all those dependent on analogue alarms etc are contacted) RTS swich  (ensuring all those whose electricity meters will stop working are contacted).  

Relaunch Strategy 

Lambeth does not yet have a functioning association so the intention is to organise a series of meetings (physical and on-line) over the course of May at which co-ordinators, volunteers and partners can get to know each other and discuss what, if anything they wish to organise, whether for announcement during Neighbourhood Watch week or later. This includes discussions to put flesh on the plans for Youth Watch - driven by teenagers, for teenagers -after the exam season.

In the mean time the proposed relaunch strategy in Lambeth has three main strands and three proposed projects which can be adopted/promoted locally with minimal resource 

The strands are: 

The evidence is that when 30% or more of households in a street, estate or ward participate the effect is transformative. Several wards in Wandsworth and Merton have achieved this. The best in Lambeth has just over 1% and one street with 30%. One ward has no households at all.  

The intention is to copy other parts of the country and build on strength and expand outworks with the support of Estate Agents, Housing Managers, Schools and Parent Groups but add a focus on helping the most vulnerable to access on-line health and welfare services.  

That will, however, be a slow process. The aim is to speed up progress by:   

Lambeth is the first to try this approach which will be much easier in some wards than others.  

Success will depend on using 2) above to recruit digital (including cyber) professionals living in Lambeth to help with face to face support, including mentoring for the teenagers (including NEETs) from diverse and disadvantaged background who we are seeking to engage and support before they get into trouble – perhaps during the summer break. 

The Projects are:

Both are available to the embryonic Lambeth Neighbourhood Watch Association at no cost, other than that for local promotion, in return for evaluation (see below) and publicity for success 

This trial will be in co-operation with Governors for Schools with the twin aims of seeing whether it will indeed enable schools to provide better safeguarding at low cost and drawing digital/cyber professionals from diverse backgrounds into helping with careers advice and mentoring as well as technical support.

The intention is to structure the review process to draw in volunteers from the digital, cyber,  marketing and research professions who will also be supporters and mentors for wider careers,   work experience and other engagement programmes co-designed with the youngsters.  

Travel Guardian is powered by a central platform provided by a community interest company.  imabi, that allows all content to be dynamically managed, either nationally or locally. The national partners include British Transport Police, one of the original partners for whom it was developed for whom it was developed as an incident reporting and response tools. Local management is possible via the imabi Connect psrtner programme. Reviewers are therefore asked to consider not only the current apps but potential to use the central platform to manage content and collect information to support wider community improvement initiatives. 

Below are some questions based on each area of the app and platform.