Progress and plans for relaunch of Neighbourhood Watch in Lambeth as at 20th May 2026

Progress and plans for relaunch of Neighbourhood Watch in Lambeth as at 20th May 2026

From Philip Virgo as Development Lead

This is mainly for information, including on opportunities to help ensure that the Lambeth Association (when launched) helps the local groups to meet your needs and addresses your priorities.

Please reply if you would like to give feedback on the forward plans, especially if you disagree.

Please also let me know if would like to join the development team or get involved with implementation of any of the recommendations and/or have views on how we could/should seek to work with the Council, Police and/or others. You can do so by replying or by e-mailing development@lambethnhw.co.uk

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 also 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 of the 32 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. Participation has been now been growing at about 5% a month for over a year.

In November 2025 Lambeth Council asked residents for views on priorities in the face of Budget cuts. Over 5,000 replied and in January Love Lambeth reported that respondents had put “tackling violence and anti-social behaviour” top, well ahead of street cleaning and looking after vulnerable children, which came send and third.

The 2025 Neighbourhood Watch Survey, also published in January also showed the top “concern” of nearly 40,000 respondent was Anti-social behaviour at 65%. This was followed, by “home broken into and something stolen” at 48% and cybercrime at 44%. Physical Assault came 6th at 26% When it came to “Experience of crime” (including as a witness) ASB again top at 60%. but Cyber fell to 5th on 17% (behind physical assault at 26%). “Home broken into” fell much further, to 10th at under 5%. ASB and Physical assault were the two categories with similar percentages for “concern” and “experience”.

In January 2026 the “Strategic Assessment Summary” for the annual statutory review by the Safer Lambeth Partnership , recommended re-ordering the priorities inherited from its previous review. The top six are now 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 is no mention of on-line safety and safeguarding (aka cyber, including abuse, grooming, incitement etc.). These appear to have been left out of the assessment exercise.

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 identified the need to identify, support and extend befriending activities, including community transport, as essential to meeting its priorities of addressing health inequalities, including among those with chronic conditions. There is an obvious fit with the NHW objective of enabling neighbours to support more vulnerable neighbours.

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. Meanwhile the priorities for the Safer Neighbourhood Panel Ward chairs who attended the Neighbourhood Watch planning meeting on March 31st included:

the provision of better guidance on how to report what, to who: police, trading standard, council etc.

the provision of infomration on what action them is likely to be taken, by who, and who to contact if it is not.

to 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: agreement with Lambeth Community Police lead to work together on processes for co-operation in the local use of the platform shared 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. This demonstrated the scale of demand for activities to help older generations to go securely on-line.

November half-term - focus groups organised by Rathbones indicated that the main safety concern of teenagers 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.

February: start of NHW Active Bystander Training activities in Lambeth

March: launch of CCW programme (with LSNB co-funding) to train community support staff and NHW volunteers to help the vulnerable go safely on-line and support them victimised.

March 31st: : planning meeting with NHW co-ordinators, Ward SNP chairs and others. This confirmed we not able to launch an operational Association without Council support and that participants were more interested in delivering practical results than a nominal launch before the start of election purdah.

4 The recommendations and actions from the planning meeting were:

Planning, monitoring and review meetings

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 that where possible meetings should be “merged” to shared room, agenda and chair.

The 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 Ward SNP meetings with local police team, relevant council staff (including housing) and councillors and NHW groups.

Meetings should be in person or on-line. Hybrid meetings do not work unless well-structured and managed by staff with experience of successfully running them.

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”. Officers in the Association, when it is formed, will need to be co-ordinators.

Review of Website

Call for volunteers to join a communications sub-group to review and update the draft website particularly guidance on reporting and on contacts for local/national support.

Contact the Resilience Association and others with relevant expertise for identity and or realistic guidance for Lambeth residents on “What to do in An Emergency”.

Lambeth NHW Community Safety Channel

Encourage NHW participants to sign up for Travel Guardian and volunteer to help use the platform to meet local objectives, including 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 engagement programmes already being organised for this summer.

Call for volunteers to work with schools officers and networks to plan round tables with schools, youth and parent groups and those running health, welfare, safeguarding and safety services to identify relevant advice, guidance, support and build on 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, hopefully in time for 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 .

Explore the practicality of following practice in co-operation between NHW and Trading Standards in line with shared national/local priorities, including on delivery of Friends Against Scams and Stop Loan Sharks.

Other Groups

Send out a note asking Ask NHW participants to review their own areas of interest and sign up to relevant information services (e.g. Fire and Emergency , Report Fraud , Get Safe Online) and to special interest groups (e.g. Speedwatch, Cycle Watch, Dog Watch, Park Watch etc.) so that meetings can be organised to agree collective action.

5 Forward Plans

To June 1st :

Identify and promote relevant activities, including training in Online Safety and Support via Cyber Security for frontline workers (inc. volunteers) Tuesday, May 26 and Tech Facilitated Abuse, Wednesday, June 10 and other relevant Training & Events - Lambeth Community Hubs Network .

Identify partners for future co-operation, including via the VCS Network Event on June 4th and other events in the Lambeth VCSE Future programme.

Meet with those working on the NHS befriending agenda to agree future co-operation.

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

The meeting to elect the leader for the new Council is scheduled for the end of May.

After June 7th

Organise consultation meetings and round tables to work up plans for announcement before the summer break and launch in the Autumn. The intention is that these will lead to cross-cutting partnerships that put the NHW 2026 Strategy - Watch, Connect, Act into the context of supporting grass-roots, practical, results-focussed, ward-based, co-operation with the Police and community groups of all types, and also help implement the White Paper From Local to national: A New Model for Policing in line with the needs and priorities of Lambeth.

Please reply with any feedback on the forward plans, especially if you disagree, would like to get involved with implementation of any of the recommendations, or have views on how we could/should seek to work with the new Council.

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Message Sent By
Philip Virgo
(NWN, MSA, London, Lambeth)