Safer Neighbourhood Boards

The Police and Crime Committee report Safer Neighbourhood Boards calls for the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) to provide clearer guidance for people looking to set up Safer Neighbourhood Boards which are supposed to give local Londoners and victims a greater voice in the policing of their communities.

The Boards will replace existing Community and Police Engagement Groups (CPEGs) which were established as a result of Scarman Report which identified a collapse in relationships between the police and local communities as contributing to the 1981 Brixton Riots. CPEGs are being replaced by Safer Neighbourhood Boards to fulfill a commitment from Mayor Boris Johnson’s 2012 election manifesto.

The report sets out a series of question marks over the delivery of the responsibilities that MOPAC wants Safer Neighbourhood Board to fulfill including playing a role in community payback, hearing complaints from victims of crime, and monitoring community confidence in policing.

In its recommendations the Committee calls on MOPAC to provide clear guidance about:

What Safer Neighbourhood Boards will be expected to do and how they are expected to do it

How MOPAC will monitor each board’s performance of its duties

Who is expected to sit on the boards and how will they be representative of their communities

How the establishment and administration of the boards will be funded

The Committee also wants the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime Stephen Greenhalgh to publish each agreement for the establishment of a board and his reasons for granting approval for each proposal.