Safer Streets

Thanks to successful bids by the Office of the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, significant amounts of money have been spent on areas that are disproportionately affected by acquisitive crime – theft, burglary and robbery.

2020/21

The Home Office confirmed that all three bids for Northamptonshire in 2020 were successful. It was one of just three counties in the country to be awarded funds for every bid it had submitted in the first round. Overall, the OPFCC was awarded £1.4 million to split between the three schemes.

Funding of £550,000 was put towards security improvements to car parks, safe bike parking facilities and safety enhancements to hundreds of homes on the Bouverie estate and Portland Place in Northampton. The town’s CCTV system was also enhanced with the addition of thirteen new cameras.

In Wellingborough, seventy-four gates were installed in alleyways to make properties in the Victoria area more secure from crime and shut them off from anti-social behaviour. There was also an extension of the town centre CCTV system with the addition of seven new cameras around Mill Road, Cannon Street and Knox Road. And 2,000 homes received security packs, with six hundred fitted with crime prevention devices. Overall funding for the area totalled £545,000.

The All Saints area of Kettering benefitted from £280,000 in funding. Eighteen alley gates were installed along with fifteen new CCTV cameras. Sixty homes were also offered Ring doorbells, allowing homeowners to see who is knocking on their door, while a further 139 got home security products.

2021/22

The OPFCC was successful in securing £400,000 in funding for the Hemmingwell estate in Wellingborough. Much of the work focused on new secure doors being fitted at more than three hundred properties on the estate, in partnership with Greatwell Homes. And more than £40,000 worth of home security products – including bike locks, timer switches and shed alarms – were handed out to residents who attended five community events in 2021.

This is on top of 10 new CCTV cameras that have been added to extend coverage in the area for North Northamptonshire Council, as well as several environmental improvements such as the removal of derelict garage blocks and cutting back trees to improve visibility.

2022/23

The OPFCC won funding to enhance the safety of women and girls enjoying the night-time economy in Northampton and Kettering. It includes the creation of a night safety charter; improvements to increase the safety of pedestrians on a night out in Bridge Street, Northampton; lighting improvements and alley gating; and an app to help map areas where people do not feel safe so that they can be improved.

Investment in ID scan technology will also let around thirty venues in Northampton and Kettering share information about people who behave inappropriately or dangerously, which will improve security for pubs and clubs that open past 1am.

And a ground-breaking partnership will see ‘Stand by Her’ training rolled out to young men in education to help them understand the impact of harassing behaviour on women and give them the skills to challenge safely and offer support.

2023/24

Work was delivered on the Queensway area of Wellingborough, with around 650 new doors for properties in Kiln Way and Minerva Way, once again in partnership with Greatwell Homes. Alleys in Shelley Road were gated, while security lighting was fitted to some properties and there was a significant roll out of security products to residents.

There was also a major extension of North Northamptonshire Council’s CCTV scheme with up to eighteen new cameras on the estate, and car parks will be made more secure and brought to the Park Mark standard and activity schemes will be provided for young people.

2024/25

Over £466,000 was secured through Safer Streets 5, to undertake three bids across Northamptonshire, designed to tackle residential burglary, theft from motor vehicle and violence against women and girls.

Stand Up To Crime is an ambitious project designed to encourage good security routines whilst marking up thousands of property owner personal possessions using forensic marking and asset recording products. If stolen, it increases the chances that the Force can help reunite items back to their original owners, with the necessary infrastructure installed to help aide routine checking across the police estate. This 5-part plan has involved saturating Corby Kingswood and the Weston area of Northampton with Smartwater and Immobilise, cutting off the second-hand market and branching out into rural areas of the county, encouraging the public to ‘make their mark’.

M1 Services – a collaboration with Roadchef for security improvements 15a and Watford Gap services, north and southbound. We aspire to help make lorry parks particularly much more secure. Works have begun installing fencing, lighting, monitored CCTV, ANPR improvements as well as a crime stoppers campaign.

VAWG– focuses on keeping women and girls safer in and around transport. Taxi Marshals have been funded to patrol during peak times in Northampton, when footfall is at its highest. The ‘It only Takes One Campaign’ has been extended within the main train stations, and we have an innovative training package bespoke for train station staff to educate & spot the signs of VAWG.