Local Government is committed to working with the new Welsh Government to achieve:
- The devolution of responsibility of policing and youth justice and the establishment of a Commission to consider the implications of devolving the criminal justice system to the Welsh Assembly and, in the meantime, to ensure that police governance and accountability structures recognise the importance of joint working with local authorities;
- Support for further development of neighbourhood policing and management and the integration of services at the frontline;
- Continued financial support direct to Community Safety Partnerships rather than through Police and Crime Commissioner’s;
- A continued priority for responding to domestic abuse and violence, ensuring that changes to the policy landscape following implementation of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill do not undermine the objectives and aims contained within the Right to be Safe; and
- A recognition that changes to the UK Counter Terrorism Strategy, particularly in relation to Prevent, require different approaches in Wales.
Background
Community Safety is a high priority for all communities. Creating Safer Communities is not just a job for the police alone. Local authorities and the services they deliver play a key role in helping to build safer communities whether this is through responding to and preventing environmental crime such as graffiti and fly-tipping; providing alternative leisure and culture activities for those at risk of offending or protecting housing residents from anti¬social behavior.
Local authorities are also key players in Community Safety Partnerships, working alongside the police and other partners to develop multi-agency approaches to tackle crime and anti-social behavior. Some Local authority areas in Wales have contributed to the establishment of neighbourhood management, integrating neighbourhood policing with Local authority services. We believe that it is such integration of services at the front line which will allow us to respond as well as possible to the loss of resources for both local government services and police services.
Radical changes being carried out by the UK Government will have a significant impact on the way community safety is delivered in Wales. Proposals to replace police authorities with Police and Crime Commissioners will dramatically change the way in which the police are held to account by the public, and will significantly alter the role of local government in the governance structure. It will be imperative that we do our utmost to protect the strategic link between local authorities and the police in Wales. Unless we work to maintain the link between local government and the police then the service integration which will be the salvation of both organisations will be undermined.
The opposition of the WLGA to the introduction of Commissioners is based on our concern that the new forms of accountability will inevitably divorce the police service from other local services. What could suffer are our shared community safety strategies and more specific shared strategies such as those relating to Domestic Violence.
Following the Ministry of Justice Green Paper, changes to the way adult and youth justice services are delivered across England and Wales are also likely to impact on Local Authority Youth Offending services as well as housing, health, employment, education and training. It will be important for the Welsh Government and local government to work with Whitehall departments to ensure that any changes in Wales are fit for purpose in the devolved environment.
Counter Terrorism remains a crucial issue in Wales and one in which local authorities have a key role to play, particularly in terms of the prevention of radicalisation and ensuring local areas are protected. In Wales part of this work has been undertaken as part of the Community Cohesion agenda. It will be important that changes to the UK Counter Terrorism Strategy recognise the different approaches in Wales.
It is because of our fears over the impact of Home Office policy and Westminster legislation, fears that we lose the integration of services that are essential to community safety, that we now wish to work with the Welsh Government to seek the devolution of services relating to the police and youth justice and call for the establishment of a ‘Blue Ribbon’ Commission to consider devolution of the criminal justice system.