Lambeth Neighbour Watch Association Progress and Plan as at May 18th

Lambeth Neighbour Watch Association Progress and Plan as at May 18th

1 Summary

The attempt to launch an Association before election purdah had to be postponed in line with the reviews of Lambeth’s Community Safety and Resilience plans and of support for wider Voluntary Community Services put back to after the election. In consequence there is no local (as opposed to national) support for NHW groups in Lambeth to organise activities during Neighbourhood Watch Week.

We plan to approach the new Council during and after Neighbourhood Watch week with the aim of working in partnership, within the standard Memorandum of Association and Framework Document for Local Police Neighbourhood Watch Liaison, with processes for information sharing and co-operation including via the Neighbourhood Alert system, also used by Met Engage, akin to those in other London Boroughs..

2 Background

Nearly 70 Neighbourhood Watch Associations (including 24 for London boroughs) reach over 2.3 million English and Welsh households (via over 60,000 street/estate groups and their associated whatsapp and facebook groups) to help them protect themselves and vulnerable neighbours with crime prevention, community safety and emergency resilience advice, guidance and support. Lambeth has not had an Association since before Covid but, nonetheless, has over 120 groups reaching over 13,500 households and has been growing at 5% a month over the past year.

Last year Lambeth Council surveyed residents on council priorities in the face of Budget cuts. In January Love Lambeth reported that respondents put “tackling violence and anti-social behaviour” top, followed by street cleaning and looking after vulnerable children. In January the report of the 2025 Neighbourhood Watch Survey similarly showed the top “concern” to be ASB at 65%, followed by “home broken into and something stolen” at 48% and cybercrime at 44%. “Experience” (including as a witness) was different, albeit ASB was top at 60%. Cyber fell to 5th on 17% (behind physical assault at 17%). “Home broken into” fell to 10th at under 5%.

In January the “Strategic Assessment Summary” for the Safer Lambeth Partnership recommended re-ordering its inherited priorities as follows: violence against young people aged under 25, violence against girls and women, gang violence and exploitation, substance misuse, counter terrorism (reasons confidential), anti-social behaviour. There was no mention of on-line safety and safeguarding (aka cyber, including abuse, grooming, incitement etc.).

The local delivery of NHS services, including by GPs, Pharmacies and Hospitals, is being reorganised to better target those in most need. The Lambeth Integrated Care Network has given priority to identifying, supporting and extending befriending activities, including community transport, as an essential first step towards addressing health inequalities among those with chronic conditions. There is an obvious fit with the NHW approach of neighbours supporting vulnerable neighbours.

In parallel the roll out of Met Engage, which shares the Neighbourhood Alert Platform with Neighbourhood Watch, has begun to generate information on local priorities and to raise expectations of what could/should be achieved.

The priorities for the Safer Neighbourhood Panel Ward chairs who attended the Neighbourhood Watch planning meeting in March included to:

make sense of how to report what to who: police, trading standard, council.

understand what action is then likely to be taken, by who, and how to complain if is not.

rationalise the plethora of consultation and co-ordination meetings and schedule these in advance to facilitate attendance

3 Progress over the past year

March 2025: agreed with Community Police lead to work together on co-operation with Met Engage

September: funding secured via Lambeth Safer Neighbourhood Board for pilot programme to train volunteers in helping vulnerable neighbours securely access on-line services.

October: event organised by Clear Community Web for Older Persons day, in co-operation with Age Concern, Good Things Foundation, Barclay Bank and others, demonstrated the scale of demand for r workshops to help older generations to go securely on-line.

November half-term - focus groups organised by Rathbones indicated the main safety concerns of teenagers outside school was travel to/from school and after sports/social activities, particularly on bus routes and at travel hubs where schools mix. It also indicated the need for bystander training and guidance to reflect the lived experience of victims and those at risk.

December: Met Police Commissioner’s visit to Lambeth led to agreement to try to get Association, MoU and practical processes for co-operation in place by March 31st.

January 2026: meeting with Schools Officer for Lambeth and Southwark on plans to handle the devolution of schools and youth support to ward officers and priorities for action.

March: launch of CCW programme to train social services support staff and NHW volunteers to help the vulnerable go safely on-line and support them victimised.

March; planning meeting with NHW co-ordinators, Ward SNP chairs and others, This indicated that participants were more interested in delivering practical results than a nominal launch launch before the start of election purdah.

4 The recommendations and actions from the planning meeting were:

Planning, monitoring and review meetings

Regular, pre scheduled, quarterly meetings of the SNP chairs with the Borough Community Police lead should be aligned with other monitoring and review meetings, including quarterly pre-scheduled SNP meetings for each ward with local police team, relevant council staff (including housing) and councillors.

To avoid duplication of effort Neighbourhood Watch structures, planning and reporting should be aligned with SNP and other meetings, including those of the Lambeth Safer Neighbourhood Board. Alignment means “held in the same room, sharing the same agenda and chair.

Meetings should be in person or on-line. Hybrid meetings do not work unless well-structured and managed y experienced staff.

Association Leadership Team

The Association officers should not have to live in Lambeth. Those with professional responsibilities for health, welfare, law enforcement, education, social services or running local businesses (including hospitality or security) who commute into Lambeth from neighbouring boroughs should be welcome as officers as well as participants.

Call for volunteers to serve as officers in the interim leadership team that will replace the current development team with formation of the “Association”.

Review of Website

Call for volunteers to join a communications sub-group to review the draft website.

Contact the Resilience Association and others for guidance on “What to do in An Emergency.

Lambeth NHW Community Safety Channel

Invite NHW participants to sign up for Travel Guardian and volunteer for sub-groups to use the platform to help meet local objectives, including addressing violence against girls and women. Then ask imabi to help with events to use the uncharged channel they have offered for a pilot.

Schools and Youth Engagement

Identify and help publicise youth programmes already being organise for this summer.

Call for volunteers to help plan round tables with schools, youth and parent groups, schools officers and health, welfare, safeguarding and safety services to identify relevant advice, guidance, support and experience of what works in practice.

Befriending

Contact those planning NHS support for befriending networks to discuss co-operation, including via the relaunched Lambeth VCS network, with promotion during Neighbourhood watch week.

Business Watch

Invite Business Improvement Districts, FSB members and others to a meeting to discuss formation of Lambeth Business Watch, including to host cyber and counter-fraud activities in co-operation with CCW, the London Cyber Resilience Centre and Report Fraud .

Organise a note on best practice in co-operation between NHW and Trading Standards, including on the delivery of scam awareness campaigns using the tools already available

Other Groups

Send out a note asking Ask NHW participants to review their own areas of interest and sign up to relevant groups (e.g. “Community Speedwatch”, “cycle watch”, and “Dog Watch” so that meetings can be organised to agree collective action.

5 Forward Plans

To June 7th :

Work with Council, Community Police and Partners to use Neighbourhood Watch Week and the Big Lunch to promote social and cultural inclusion and cohesion in support of vulnerable neighbours.

After June 7th

Organise consultation meetings and round tables to work up plans for announcement before the summer break and launch in the Autumn.

These should will put the NHW 2026 Strategy: Watch, Connect, Act into the context of supporting ward-based co-operation with the Police on implementing the White Paper “From Local to national: A New Model for Policing” in line with the needs and priorities of Lambeth

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Philip Virgo
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