More local, visible & accessible policing

Ensure the police are there when you need them. Deliver effective response and follow up all reasonable lines of enquiry.

• Essex Police is the biggest and strongest it has ever been and we must use that to ensure that visible policing is delivered in local communities.
• We must ringfence our Town Centre Teams, Community Policing Teams and the Rural Engagement Team and Business Crime Team, and make sure these units are out on patrol and solving problems in our communities.
• Increase our targeted hotspot patrols to deal with anti-social behaviour and serious violence.
• Allocate resources to deal with Neighbourhood Crime, with a focus on burglary, car theft, drug dealing and shoplifting. 
• Significantly improve all routes of access to policing, with a particular focus on the 101 non-emergency call line and digital public access. A better response will encourage reporting and allow more effective planned interventions.
• Provide better feedback to victims, boosting confidence and improving police legitimacy. 
• Grow all forms of volunteering and community engagement, from cadet programmes to becoming a Special Constable or an On-Call Firefighter.
• Continue to work with rural communities and farmers to understand their challenges and to increase their policing presence to tackle all forms of rural crime including hare coursing, unlawful incursions, equipment theft and fly-tipping.

 

Drive down anti-social behaviour & crime

More hotspot policing and monitoring known offenders to prevent crime, including in our rural areas.

• Drive down all crime types through prevention and early intervention, targeted on people and places through the better use of data and intelligence and a clear evidence base.
• Ensure anti-social behaviour and serious violence is dealt with more swiftly by increasing targeted hotspot policing, with 15 ASB and 15 SV hotspots in 2024. 
• Crack down on illegal drugs that blight communities, dealing with drug-dealing on our streets and expanding the use of drug-testing on arrest. 

• Strengthen our Community Safety Partnership hubs to encourage local ownership and leadership of community-led solutions and provide public reassurance, reduce harm and protect the vulnerable.
• Identify and protect vulnerable individuals and groups from the exploitation and harm caused by drug supply and use, and misuse of alcohol.
• Roll out live facial recognition equipment to take known offenders off our streets, and use Artificial Intelligence to take more offenders successfully through the courts.
• To help allocate resources most effectively, I will encourage Essex Police to use crime harm scores, looking at concentrations and prevalence of crime, and reduce the total level of harm in the county.
• Work with the Levelling-Up Town Boards in Clacton, Canvey Island and Harlow to make communities safe in those areas and help them thrive.

 

Beat knife crime and drug gangs and protect young people

Take drugs and weapons off our streets and help young people get out of gangs.

• Build on the success of the Violence & Vulnerability Partnership, taking a public health approach to addressing serious violence, investing in activity proven to work and focussing on keeping young people free from crime and intervening early to help steer them to a successful life. This will include:
• A programme of education to inform groups within communities on risks, support and guidance relating to issues around serious violence.
• An early help offer, in partnership with schools, social care and a range of organisations – to identify and respond earlier when a young person is at risk of gang involvement.
• Target knife crime, with the aim of reducing emergency hospital admissions for assault with a sharp object by over half and non-domestic homicides by over a third by 2031. 
• Deliver activity which keeps young people away from areas of criminality where serious violence or its threat is inherent, such as in County Lines drug dealing. Commission programmes in schools and youth groups, provide mentoring and behavioural change interventions, and have youth workers in A&E. 
• Ensure relentless enforcement and pursuit against knife crime offenders operating in Essex. Work with the National Crime Agency and use local intelligence and stop & search to take drugs and weapons off our streets. 

 

Protect women and girls from violence and domestic abuse

Invest in safer streets and bring more perpetrators to justice.

• Put victims at the heart of all we do, ensuring support services such as Independent Sexual and Domestic Violence Advisors are tailored to meet their different needs and enable people to build resilience and live safely.
• Work with schools to educate young people on healthy relationships and risky behaviours.
• Use our Safer Streets Fund to invest in public space initiatives that women and girls tell me would make them feel safer. Improve lighting, CCTV and safety in our town centres and key hotspots where women and girls feel at risk.
• Support initiatives such as the SOS/Night Bus, Ask for Angela, Purple Flag and All Bar None, to help women and girls be safer in the night time economy.
• Build on our successful Reflect and Change Programmes that seek to break the cycle of domestic abuse by working with perpetrators to change their behaviours.
• Work with the Criminal Justice System to ensure it is effective in holding domestic abuse perpetrators to account and delivering positive outcomes for victims.
• Raise victim confidence in reporting by working across the criminal justice system to increase successful conviction rates, particularly for rape and sexual assault, using a victim-centred approach to gather evidence and build the case. 
• Continue to increase confidence in policing by ensuring Essex Police deal robustly with inappropriate behaviours.
• Monitor the use and effectiveness of legislation and processes in managing offenders, such as Domestic Violence Protection Orders, Domestic Abuse Protection Orders and Stalking Protection Orders.
• Ensure Essex Police support Clare’s Law and respond promptly to requests for disclosure of previous domestic violence offending. 

 

Ensure vulnerable people are protected

More Safe & Well visits, and Community Safety Officers to identify risks and help people stay safe.

• Make a shift in main effort toward prevention in both Police and Fire & Rescue Services.
• Invest in more Community Safety Officers to identify risks and help people stay safe. 
• Increase Safe & Well visits undertaken by the Fire & Rescue Service to ensure the more vulnerable and isolated in our communities remain safe and supported.
• Work in partnership and share data to identify and safeguard those most vulnerable to fraud and to being repeat victims.
• Work with partners and wider law enforcement to identify those targeting the vulnerable through fraud and seek to bring them to justice.
• Work across the criminal justice system to reduce delays in court hearings to ensure that more perpetrators of crime are brought to justice.
• Champion the rights of victims, including their right to be referred to services that are tailored to support their needs, for example Restorative Justice and Mediation Services.
• Ensure our services adhere to the Victims Code, that sets out the minimum level of services that victims can expect from criminal justice agencies.
• Push for more powers to commission criminal justice services and bring together agencies to improve Offender Management. 
• Support victims of human trafficking and modern slavery including sexual exploitation and continue to promote close working with the UK Border Agency, the National Crime Agency and national and regional partners to support victims and bring perpetrators to justice in a timely way for victims.

 

Improve road safety and reduce road death in Essex to Zero

Tackle speeding and drink and drug driving. Better tech, better education, and better enforcement.

• Working through the Safer Essex Roads Partnership (SERP), both Police and Fire & Rescue must act to implement Vision Zero, our programme to reduce road deaths in Essex to zero by 2040.
• With partners in SERP, invest in prevention programmes to deliver driver education to support behavioural change, such as the Fire Bike scheme and Community Speed Watch, and improve skills on the road.
• Work with the motor industry to improve vehicle safety.
• Invest in new technology, including Artificial Intelligence, to ensure enforcement against those who will not learn.

 

Fire & Rescue Service Reform

Modernising the Fire & Rescue Service to reduce risk and keep more people safe.

• Continue to invest in our workforce by extending programmes of training and development, helping them to take on more activities around prevention and protection. 
• Extend skills-based pay progression to reward those taking on additional responsibilities. 
• Modernise the Retained Duty System, allowing more flexibility so hours available match the times of greater risk, and invest in recruiting and supporting our On-Call crews. 
• Ensure pay and progression make the service an employer of choice to people of all characteristics and backgrounds.
• Make sure that our internal resilience model will support the service through times of disruption. 
• Expand Fire Protection and Enforcement activities making buildings across Essex safer and implement the Risk-Based Inspection Programme Plan.
• Increase further the number of Home Safety visits carried out by fire crews and do more joint Safe & Well visits with other agencies.  
• Drive forward the ambition for every home to have a working smoke alarm. 
• Do more to educate drivers and improve driver behaviour across the county, working through SERP, to reduce harm on our roads and implement Vision Zero.
• Enhance the multi-agency approach to responding to incidents of flooding and preventing it from happening in the first place. 
• Renew technology to make the service more efficient, effective and fit for purpose. 
• Invest in environmental technology and electric vehicles.