What is Community Safety?

Torridge is one of the safest places to live, work and visit in England and Wales, and we should be proud that the level of recorded crime still remains low. However we should never become complacent and that is why your Community Safety Partnership work together in partnership to reduce crime and disorder, protect the vulnerable, and to help everyone feel safer.

Who make up your Community Safety Partnership?

Torridge District Council Officers and Elected Members work closely with representatives from:

• Devon and Cornwall Police
• Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue
• Devon County Council
• Dorset, Devon and Cornwall Community Rehabilitation Company (Probation Service)
• Northern Devon NHS Clinical Commissioning Group
• Devon Public Health
• Business community representative(s)
• Social Housing providers representative(s)
• Voluntary and community group representation

How we assess our local crime priorities

All work undertaken by the partnership is overseen by The Safer Devon Partnership at Devon County Council who annually produce a Devon Strategic Assessment. From this assessment The Partnership then assess the local crime priorities and consult with partners and the local community about how to deal with them.

Everyone would like to live in a safe community where there is no fear of becoming a victim of crime, where they feel safe in their homes and going about their daily lives.  Community Safety concerns us all and by working together we stand the best chance of making Torridge a safer place to live, work and play in.

Torridge District Council works as part of the Safer North Devon community safety partnership to improve the quality of life for residents in Torridge, by reducing crime and disorder and improving community safety and security.

We work closely with the Police, Elected Members and other community and voluntary organisations about issues that concern residents.

Torridge District Council contributes to the delivery of a wide range of initiatives, including:

• Anti-social Behaviour Orders, which tackles the worst cases of anti-social behaviour in the District
• Prolific Offenders Scheme, working with offenders to change their behaviour
• Bideford Radio Link and other similar schemes - working with businesses in the town centres to reduce crime.

These are just some of the projects which together aim to have a real impact on residents and making people feel safer.  Our approach is to:

• Improve security to reduce the opportunity for crime
• Work with offenders and potential offenders to change behaviour
• Raise public awareness of both the true incidence of crime and our work to reduce the fear of crime

Preventing Exploitation

The Safer Devon Partnership has developed an online toolkit to tackle the threat of exploitation. This toolkit will help frontline workers learn about, identify and report exploitation happening in Devon and the surrounding area.

The toolkit can be accessed at preventingexploitationtoolkit.org.uk. The toolkit is designed for anyone who, through their paid or voluntary work, may encounter people who are vulnerable to exploitation.

The toolkit will help people to:

• gain an understanding of exploitation happening in their local area
• gain an understanding of the factors that can make people vulnerable to exploitation
• identify signs of exploitation
• report concerns that someone is being exploited
• receive guidance and support about working with people who are vulnerable to exploitation
• advance their personal development through gaining a greater understanding of exploitation

For more in Community Safety, please see the pages below