Keeping Bury safe

Tuesday, 8 March 2022 00:00

By David Murphy

Bury Council and its partners are setting out plans this week to keep safe residents and communities.

Making our neighbourhoods safer is one of the most important ways that we will deliver our ambitions for the borough as part of the Let’s Do It Community Strategy.

The council’s Cabinet will discuss the Community Safety Plan 2022-25, which has been developed by Bury’s Community Safety Partnership, on Wednesday 9 March.

Community Safety Partnerships are set up by law to identify local community safety priorities by working with the public.

The Community Safety Plan builds on the work of the previous three years and the most important contribution has come directly from listening to our communities and residents. We have spoken with people from communities across the borough, at neighbourhood events, about what makes them feel unsafe and what should we do about it.

We have held separate events with young people, women’s groups and religious groups to make sure we have captured a range of opinions, and also taken on board the views of Bury residents who responded to the Greater Manchester Police & Crime Survey.

The views of several thousand residents have been taken into account when building this plan.

It sets out priorities until 2025:

Reducing drug-related offending
Supporting victims and tackling the causes of domestic abuse
Creating and maintaining safe spaces. In particular this priority looks at speeding, and women’s safety in public places
Tackling crime and antisocial behaviour
Reducing reoffending

“Feeling safe is one of the key measures for quality of life,” said Councillor Richard Gold, Cabinet Member for Communities.

“Our Community Safety Plan sets out our priorities for the next three years to keep all our neighbourhoods safe and we are proud of the work of the Community Safety Partnership, during the last three years, which has helped to maintain Bury’s position as one of the safest places to live in Grater Manchester.

“We set up a scheme to work with young people on the verge of criminality to support and divert them away from crime and antisocial behaviour, and which has now been adopted across Greater Manchester.

“Every victim of a crime in Bury can access a service to support them to recover from their ordeal.

“We have appointed an Independent Domestic Violence Advocate in Fairfield Hospital to support victims of domestic abuse and launched a service for perpetrators to support them to change their behaviour.

“Our Youth Services Outreach Team works with young people in hotspot locations across the borough to divert them away from crime and antisocial behaviour.

“We have created a Hate Crime Ambassador programme to encourage reporting of hate crime and deliver messaging into the community.

“We are working with our partners to improve the safety of our waterways.

“But we can never be complacent and this plan provides the framework to focus our efforts on addressing crime and antisocial behaviour in Bury for the next three years.”

The plan has been developed by the local Community Safety Partnership which includes Bury Council and NHS Bury Clinical Commissioning Group, Greater Manchester Police, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, Probation service, Bury and Rochdale Youth Justice Service, Six Town Housing, HM Prison Service and Greater Manchester Combined Authority.