Our Neighbourhood Policing Community Charter

Neighbourhood policing is at the centre of our policing purpose.

Devon, Cornwall, and the Isles of Scilly have remarkable geography that brings unique policing challenges. The Force area includes two national parks – Dartmoor and Exmoor – as well as the three cities of Exeter, Plymouth and Truro. There are also six inhabited islands across the Isles of Scilly and Lundy, and 730 miles of coastline. In addition, the area welcomes over 11 million visitors each year.

These challenges reinforce the importance of maintaining positive relationships with both our communities and partners, and working together so we have a positive impact on crime and disorder in the area.

The connection we have with our communities will help build trust and confidence, particularly through our approach of being visible and accessible with meaningful, regular engagement and prompt response to incidents. Through our first-hand experiences, we recognise that working with communities and partners will enable us to prevent and tackle crime collectively.

This Charter sets out how we will deliver this within our communities and what they can expect from us. It will continue to develop as our ambition and commitment towards working together grows.

Glen Mayhew
Assistant Chief Constable

Our neighbourhood policing teams (NPTs) are based locally. They undertake the more traditional ‘local policing’ role within communities, including engagement, problem solving and dealing with longer term local issues. Whilst NPTs are often the visible representation of Devon & Cornwall Police in the community, they are supported by wider force assets such as patrol, criminal investigations, and the operations department.

Our structures and processes will offer greater visibility on our roads and in our communities and improved accessibility through dedicated, identifiable, knowledgeable, and connected local policing areas.

We will:

1. Focus on persistent problems affecting people in our counties.
2. Dedicate problem-solving time to tackle core problems in every parish.
3. Prioritise a sense of local ownership by officers who are known to you.
4. Let you know who is policing your neighbourhood and what they are doing.

This will be achieved by:

1. Ensuring that our contact centre offers all available methods to contact us, via the telephone, our website, or various social media platforms.
2. Ensuring that there is a dedicated, named, neighbourhood policing team made up of police constables (PCs) and police community support officers (PCSOs) for your area, who will continue to work to understand local issues and provide consistency in your area.
3. Ensuring that the teams are led by a named sergeant and inspector, dedicated to their roles.
4. Ensuring that your local police team member photographs and contact details, including mobile phone numbers, are accurate, up-to-date, and easily accessible via our website, our community messaging service Devon and Cornwall Alert, and on social media platforms. This will enable you to contact the teams directly when they are on duty.
5. Promoting what we are doing in your local community, providing up-to-date information about policing in your neighbourhood on the Devon & Cornwall Police website, on social media, via Devon and Cornwall Alert, via traditional print and broadcast media, and in your community via clear, easy to read ways.
6. Modernising how the public access our officers and our services at our main police stations, developing more universal digital provision.
7. Being available to meet with you in key public spaces in your communities through our engagement vehicles, across each of our four policing areas (Cornwall and Isles of Scilly, North, East and West Devon, Plymouth, and South Devon). We will advertise locations and times in advance, letting you know where we will be, and when.
8. Attending local district or parish council meetings virtually, or in person. We will attend parish council meetings, as agreed with the chairs or clerks, to report publicly on policing performance, answer questions and take away any problems or concerns you raise.
9. Engaging and agreeing a contract with each local district to provide consistent, timely, informative, and good quality updates.
10. Our NPTs will be empowered to draw upon Force assets to resolve local concerns, applying a problem-solving approach. This includes the use of Forcewide accredited specialist problem solvers.
11. Ensuring that our teams are regularly visiting and are visible and accessible within school settings and other educational establishments.
12. Through our community messaging service Devon and Cornwall Alert, we will continue to share information in a way that suits you, and to enable you to sign up to tailored neighbourhood alerts and updates.
13. Attending a range of larger scale public events within your county, where we will set up and staff a Devon & Cornwall Police stand to engage with our communities, offer advice and listen to your concerns.
14. Recognising the enduring use of traditional print and broadcast media, we will also enhance our use of social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram and X to further improve our communications with all our different communities.

We will use the most effective methods to understand key concerns across the wide range of our urban, rural, and coastal communities, and feed back about the issues that most impact on them. We will make sure that we are able to respond both proactively and reactively to issues and update communities, keeping people informed on what work is being done to tackle the issues raised.

We will:

1. Seek to utilise all available means of communication, to ensure that we fully understand the issues that impact you and your communities.
2. Engage with a wide and varied cross-section of our communities, to ensure that we are tackling the issues which the majority feel is of most concern.
3. We will identify and understand your key concerns in all parishes across the Force area, and specifically tackle those issues through a problem-solving approach.

This will be achieved by:

1. Undertaking surveys, and arranging drop-in sessions, to hear concerns directly from residents.
2. Focussing effort on engagement with minority and diverse communities, and with those who would not necessarily feel comfortable engaging with the police.
3. Responding to feedback and written correspondence efficiently, with suitable time-frames agreed with the writer.
4. Liaising closely with MPs and unitary and parish councillors, to deal directly with concerns from constituents.
5. Harnessing the power of social media, Devon and Cornwall Alert, and the internet to seek views from the local community.
6. Utilising all forms of media and communication means, to ensure that communities are kept as up to date as possible on policing activities in their area.
7. Using data, intelligence, and technology to fully understand the make-up of the communities we serve, to ensure that we are communicating widely and efficiently with all.

The prevention and reduction of crime and harm on our roads, in our homes and across our communities will be embedded in everything we do. Our local teams will work with communities and partners, supported by our specialist departments, to undertake primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention through a consistent problem-solving approach.

We will:

1. Work with communities, statutory agencies, and the voluntary sector to prevent crime, harm, and anti-social behaviour through a consistent problem-solving approach, supported by the Prevention Department.
2. Use innovative, evidence-based practice to intervene as early as possible.
3. Focus on repeat victims, repeat locations, and repeat offenders to reduce the recurrence of problems that affect our communities.

This will be achieved by:

1. Using our established, innovative Prevention Department to consistently adopt nationally recognised effective practice, prevent local problems developing and tackle established issues effectively and swiftly.
2. Focus our team of neighbourhood beat officers and PCSOs on early intervention and prevention with children and young people, and to deal with emerging community problems with our partners, at the earliest opportunity.
3. Ensuring that our staff are trained and skilled in identifying the complexities of harm and vulnerability, and use an evidence-based problem-solving approach for everything they do.
4. Use a consistent framework to analyse problems, intervene effectively to tackle them and evaluate the impact of the response.
5. Preventing organised crime groups (OCGs) from becoming established in communities and relentlessly disrupting them where they have.
6. Identifying and providing supportive interventions to the most vulnerable within our communities.
7. Provide high quality training for all frontline officers and staff to provide relevant, timely and useful prevention advice to the community.
8. Build on existing data and information sharing partnerships, to improve and enrich intelligence and prevention work across partnerships.
9. Develop shared problem-solving platforms and more streamlined means of sharing information between agencies.

We are committed to tackling recurrent and connected problems in communities and working proactively with those communities and partners, to prevent them taking root in the first place.

We will focus on our priority of keeping communities safe, ensuring that we identify the vulnerable and target our response and resources at communities where the risk of harm is the greatest, thus affording the greatest priority to our most vulnerable people.

The nature of communities, and the crimes which affect them, has changed, and continues to change. Our population is ageing, and the growth of the internet has led to a globalised society where people have fewer interactions with their communities than previously. There is also a greater awareness of the hidden threats that face people living within neighbourhoods, such as the exploitation of children and adults, domestic abuse, organised crime, and radicalisation.

Our investment in police officers, whose role will focus on early help and intervention, will ensure that we can better work with partners to intervene quickly and proactively where any vulnerability is identified. We will develop more sophisticated data to enable us to better identify vulnerability, and to better track the impact that our interventions will have in reducing it.

We will continue to refine and enhance the support that our established Victim Care Unit offers to vulnerable victims, improving and sustaining referral rates and ensuring that referrals lead to enhanced support for victims of crime when they most need it.

We will:

1. Ensure that we adopt a trauma-informed approach, and with partners, recognise and support those who have suffered adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).
2. Afford the greatest priority to the most vulnerable people in society.
3. Police spaces within our neighbourhoods where harm is hidden, as well as public places where it is most visible.
4. Target our response and resources at the locations where the risk of harm is greatest.

This will be achieved by:

1. Using sophisticated intelligence and analysis to identify the threats facing our communities, not simply those which are highly visible, but also those which are hidden.
2. Ensuring that our NPTs develop a thorough understanding of the most vulnerable people in their areas.
3. Using our Victim Care Unit to best support vulnerable victims through help, signposting, and practical support.
4. Effectively and consistently identifying and managing those people who cause recurring harm to those around them.
5. Focusing with our partners, on things that make people vulnerable, and intervening early to prevent them.
6. Provide continuous professional development to our staff, to ensure that our workforce, and that of our partners, operate in a trauma-informed manner.

Our NPTs will continue to build strong relationships with communities to prevent and address problems. We police by consent, and to maintain that consent, we will remain connected and part of the communities we serve.

We recognise that socially inclusive and well-connected communities are safer places to live and as part of them, the police are well-placed to support communities to work together in positive association to make change happen.

We will:

1. Focus on the strengths of our diverse communities, and support the growth of cohesion within them.
2. Engage local people to prioritise persistent problems which cause the most harm, and build the participation of local people in addressing them.
3. Listen to what communities say about us, and act on what we hear.
4. Be honest with our communities, and not create expectations that we cannot fulfil.

This will be achieved by:

1. Ensuring that our neighbourhood policing staff are all trained to deliver a comprehensive problem-solving approach, to deliver excellent solutions alongside their partners and communities.
2. Ensuring that our PCs and PCSOs understand and are known at key locations within their neighbourhoods, such as town and parish council offices, schools, community centres, doctors’ surgeries, care homes and places of worship.
3. Building up the profile and value of our police staff volunteers, our special constabulary, and our police cadets, so they can help us to reach out to our communities even more effectively.
4. Investing in community-based watch schemes, such as Neighbourhood Watch, Rural Watch, Horse Watch (horse and rural related incidents) and Community Speed Watch, which allow people in communities to look out for each other.
5. Develop and support new community-based Watch schemes, such as Street Watch and Heritage Watch.
6. Work closely, and in collaboration with, existing voluntary groups and organisations, recognising their importance in tackling local concerns.
7. Ensuring that we maintain a robust and diverse Independent Advisory Group (IAG) and Custody Lay Visitor Scheme in every local policing area.
8. Reviewing our approach to youth engagement, particularly how we work with children and young people in schools and beyond, to build  relationships at an early stage of life.

The police have primary responsibility for preventing and detecting crime and keeping people safe from harm within our communities and on our roads. However, we do not always hold all the relevant information about the nature and causes of the problems affecting communities, nor the powers or means to solve them. As those problems become more complex and diverse, so the need for creating collaborative solutions to address them becomes more vital.

We will work together with all our partners, to drive a better understanding of our communities and the issues they face, and to deliver collective solutions and better confidence in our policing services.

We will:

1. Align ourselves closely with other partners and third sector agencies where appropriate.
2. Harness the collective resources of partners and communities, to provide a sustainable approach to reducing crime and harm and improving road safety.
3. Share information effectively to keep people safe, and seek
   information from others to further this aim.

This will be achieved by:

1. Working closely with public safety partners to provide the most cohesive and effective response to issues, wherever and whenever the opportunities arise.
2. Reviewing our data-sharing agreements, so that we always ‘dare to share’ within the boundaries of the law.
3. Using innovative analytical tools to draw together data, integrate our knowledge and make better decisions.
4. Participating fully in the counties’ multi-agency partnership forums, such as the Health and Wellbeing Board, Community Safety Partnerships, the Serious Organised Crime Joint Agency Group (a multi-agency partnership
   group designed to address serious and organised crime), and the Local Safeguarding Boards.
5. Using existing and new legislative powers to bring the police, partners, and the community together to prevent crime more effectively.

These six core areas form the basis of our neighbourhood policing Charter for the communities of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, NEW Devon, Plymouth, and South Devon.

This Charter will be reinforced with a set of metrics, by which we will be able to measure the Force’s progress against each of the six core areas set out.

Our teams

The teams who will deliver this Charter include:

Local policing inspectors will be the senior managers responsible for a geographical area which will encompass a number of individual NPTs. They will be the co-ordinator of core activity, and the individuals tasked with ensuring that they, and their teams work closely with communities and other partners to ensure effective delivery of this Charter. They will be visible in their local communities to improve confidence and understand issues on a local level.

Local policing sergeants will be dedicated to supervising the NPTs. They will provide continuity of direction to local PCs and PCSOs daily, to address the most important issues and ensure that strong relationships exist between their officers and local people. They will be visible and accessible, ensuring that the local community knows who they are.

Neighbourhood team PCs will be dedicated to neighbourhood policing within their team. They will deliver sophisticated problem-solving to prevent harm in communities, based on a thorough understanding of local strengths and use their warranted powers proactively to tackle local threats, demand, and vulnerability.

Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) will be aligned to our NPTs. Together with our PCs, they will be our most familiar faces, tackling issues of concern in communities, maintaining a consistent personal connection with local people, and building sustainable links between them.

The Prevention Department is made up of officers and police staff who are specialists in roles such as licensing, youth engagement, rural and business crime, early help, early intervention and prevention, and designing out crime.  NPTs work closely with our prevention team to both prevent crime, and sustainably resolve issues in the community. Citizens in Policing (CiP) build relationships that enable us to work with the community and the community work in policing.

Special constables will provide an additional and valued capability, supporting regular colleagues. They will be highly visible, especially around rural matters, and help us reach our communities more effectively through well-informed patrol and enforcement activity which tackles prevalent issues of local concern.

Police cadets will assist other neighbourhood officers in engaging with communities at events, and playing an important role in preventative initiatives and campaigns. They will enhance our relationships with young people across our communities, while developing their own skills and self-confidence.

Police volunteers will be a crucial link between communities and the police, sharing information and broadening the involvement of CiP through initiatives such as Neighbourhood Watch and Community Speedwatch.

Our other specialists will operate in neighbourhoods, sometimes recognised and sometimes not, but all in the common mission of protecting our communities from harm. This diverse and skilled workforce includes our response officers, detectives, roads policing units, dog handlers, child protection specialists, covert teams, and firearms officers, all of whom will provide the additional comprehensive support to our NPTs when needed.

Devon and Cornwall Alert

The Devon and Cornwall Alert messaging system enables residents, businesses, and community groups to stay connected with local neighbourhood teams. Recipients can receive updates on crimes, the latest information on on-going incidents, and learn more about what the Force is doing in local communities. People can sign up to become a registered recipient of messages of information, crime alerts or witness appeals local to the area in which they live or work, via email, text, or telephone.

Recipients will not be overloaded with information; people can choose exactly the type of alert they wish to receive.

Devon and Cornwall Alert can also be used to contact a local neighbourhood policing team. Each of the Force’s NPT’s details can be found, including mobile phone numbers to contact them when they are on duty, and through an email system.

Please note that this service is not for reporting crimes or incidents – to make a report, please visit the Contact us page.

For further details please see alerts.dc.police.uk.

Communities in Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly must have the confidence that our neighbourhood policing teams understand local concerns and that we are dealing with them.

Neighbourhood policing is central to the way that Devon & Cornwall Police delivers policing to the public. We will invest in our neighbourhood police officers and staff, equipping them with the skills they need to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour, increase trust, solve complex problems through partnerships and target those who cause harm. In doing so, we will create and maintain a sense of community pride and wellbeing.

Devon & Cornwall Police will empower our officers and staff to tackle crime and work collaboratively with our communities. We will maintain an emphasis on crime prevention with the recognition that we are part of the community and that policing with public consent is as important today as they were in the earliest days of the police service.