Agenda item

Report of the Executive Director Corporate Services.

The Council is committed to working with partners, community groups and people with lived experience to eliminate Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG).

This report sets out the Council’s strategic priorities, approach and progress in relation to VAWG. In particular, it focusses on the commitment to women’s safety in the public realm and the work taking place to advance this.

Consideration was given to the report of the Executive Director Corporate Services.

Members made the following comments:

• It was a good idea that for every licensing application, applicants were encouraged to sign up for the Ask Angela scheme which promoted women’s safety.
• The Council’s initiative of raising public awareness highlighted in 5.2 of the report was to be applauded. It was very similar to the Mayor of London’s campaign and was a very effective means of reminding people not to be inappropriate. The more places this could be highlighted the better.
• It was a good idea to start educating young people as early as possible raising their awareness by including this in the education system even at pre-school age.
• There was no statistical data in the report highlighting the number of incidents reported to the Police, comparisons with previous years incidents and how Camden compared to other boroughs in these types of incidents.
•  The Cabinet Adviser on Reducing Violence and Abuse for Women and Girls should be commended for her report, recommendations made and the self-defence initiative was a good way of empowering women.

In response to questions, Jamie Akinola (Director of Public Safety) Shaheda Rahman (Community Safety Programme Manager) and Caroline Thomas (Community Safety Partnerships Coordinator) made the following points:

• Included on the Committee’s Work Programme for later in the year was for the Police to provide this information as part of their report. The Committee was informed that officers would ensure that specific information relating to violence against women and girls would be provided by officers and the police.

ACTION BY: Director of Public Safety

• A number of initiatives were being developed by the Council with its partners, officers were looking to assess the overall impact and then provide specific data to the Committee.
• In terms of including Ask Angela as a standard condition on all new licensing and variation applications, the Licensing Act forbade licensing authorities setting standard conditions for all licence applications as each application was required to be considered on its own merits, however the Council could look into having model conditions on every application that came through.
• Officers did carry out spot checks on those premises signed up to Ask Angela to determine whether it was being implemented in practice.
• In terms of educating people at a young age that was one of the things discussed at the last Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategic Board meeting and was a discussion point which would be high on the agenda for the annual event taking place in the autumn. This would involve looking at how behaviour change in young people could be delivered at as early an age as possible.
• With regards to the self-defence classes initiative put forward in the Cabinet Adviser on Reducing Violence and Abuse for Women and Girls report, the Police had committed to establishing a Strategic Partnership Board made up of Council Officers and the Police to take forward this initiative.
• With regards to whether there had been any progress on women’s safety in the on-line space, that was on the agenda for discussion at the next Women’s Safety Working Group meeting.  This was one of the priorities going forward this year. Officers agreed to provide an update later on in the year.

ACTION BY: Community Safety Programme Manager

·       With regards to pathways out of hostels for women fleeing domestic violence, there was a pathway that existed but this depended on the relationship between a number of safeguarding services such as the Camden Safety Net Service and the Housing Service. Members were asked to email details of the specific cases referred too to the Director of Public Safety so he could provide details of the pathway out.

·       With regards to the recent cross bow killings in Bushey, Hertfordshire, Camden’s immediate response was to pick up the issue through its serious incident notification procedure. There had not been any specific link to Camden with this incident. However, from a Community Safety perspective a briefing was being provided to the Cabinet Member for Safer Communities of the impact of on-line sales of weapons such as cross bows and the challenges across the UK in terms of enforcement of this legislation.

The Cabinet Member for Safer Communities commenting on the self-defence question raised by a member, informed the Committee that this was being considered including how it could be introduced into schools enabling children at a young age to defend themselves and provide them with confidence. All new Licenced premises were being asked to do the WAVE training and Ask Angela. Officers were also visiting all licensed premises in the borough to ensure that the licensee was actually working within a framework where Ask Angela was part of their normal business.

The Cabinet Member for Safer Communities and Officers were thanked for their work, time taken to attend the meeting and their responses.

RESOLVED –

THAT the report be noted.