Kevin Evans, MSA East Cambridgeshire

Kevin told us, "I moved to Ely in 1993 and within a few months set up Neighbourhood Watch in my street. Back then emails were almost unheard of and communications were by notes put through letter boxes.

In our district, Neighbourhood Watch was run for many years by a retired police sergeant. He resigned without warning in late 2007 and passed his files to me. I quickly established an executive committee for the district, and one of our prime objectives was to increase the coverage of neighbourhood watch within East Cambridgeshire which had recently dropped to 87 registered coordinators.

Promotion has been achieved by articles in local papers, parish magazines, posters and the occasional letter drop. But the most successful method has been by having a stand at various village fetes and similarly in the local police station when they have their annual Police Open Day. As a result of the promotions we had at the start of this year, 242 coordinators. This is almost a threefold increase in numbers and achieved despite losing almost 10% of our coordinators each year due to house moves, ill health and other reasons.

All prospective coordinators are visited, and the ethos of Neighbourhood Watch explained, and information provided to help them get started. To ease the process for new coordinators, I enter their details and the details of their schemes into the Neighbourhood Alert database. This both assists the new coordinator and results in a consistent system across the district.

Although my Neighbourhood Watch activities extend beyond recruitment, the growth in our numbers is evidence of the success within our district."

Kevin’s photo is taken from a Police Open day in his area.

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