NEIGHBOURHOOD POLICING
LOCAL APPROACH TO FIGHT CRIME
Former South Wales Police Detective Constable, Steve Dodd, explains how the new neighbourhood policing pathways being introduced this year will help officers reconnect with their communities
through its second reading before Parliament on Monday 10 March 2025. Commending the Bill to the House, the Home Secretary said, ‘no-one should be left to live in fear because of crime and anti-social behaviour’. The 2025/26 police funding settlement stands at £19.6 billion to finance the Government’s delivery of its new legislation on anti-social behaviour, counterterrorism, child criminal exploitation and sexual abuse. It further includes, knife crime, serious organised crime, violence against women and girls, spiking, and cuckooing, adding new offences protecting the retail sector and its workers.
The Bill will introduce 27 new crimes
With ongoing discussions at both local and national levels, the importance of local neighbourhood policing is once again under review from police chiefs, politicians and members of the public.
the operational activity against organised crime groups is led by a more localised approach from police forces. The
The Serious Organised Crime strategy document 2023-2028 sets out five lines of action to achieve its end-to-end goals of robust public safety. The Neighbourhood Pathway Programme plays a vital role in achieving this. It recognises the value and importance of strong community links which are common to us all regardless as to which village, town or city we live in. Local neighbourhood intelligence offers an invaluable resource when tackling both low level anti-social behaviour and serious organised crime. Paragraph 174 of the Serious Organised Crime strategy 2023-2028 says most of
36 | POLICE | APRIL | 2025
“The Bill will introduce 27 new crimes to the statute books to ensure the ‘Safer Streets’ approach is centralised by the effort to put police back on the beat.”
forces role remains essential to dealing with serious and organised crime as it manifests itself in local communities. This includes strong partnership working. The report goes on to say in paragraph
177 that operational intelligence needs to be at the heart of any actions against criminals. As such every metric starts and finishes with local police intervention, protecting, preventing, assisting, comforting, somebody somewhere. The Crime and Policing Bill went
to the statute books to ensure the ‘Safer Streets’ approach is centralised by the effort to put police back on the beat, the aim being to draw all communities together. The ‘Safer Streets’ initiative is one of the Government’s flagship projects. It is a commitment to make safer town centres through community led policing; it is complemented by the ‘Clear, Hold, Build’ programme tackling serious and organised crime at a local level. Prior to taking office, the
Labour Party manifesto pledge was to ‘Take back our streets’. The echoes of Tony Blairs slogan, ‘Tough on crime, Tough on the
causes of crime’ are clearly evident and the comparisons do not end there for this is reminiscent of the first anti-social legislation drawn up in 1998, which saw the introduction of police community support officers. Back to 2025, the Neighbourhood
Pathway Programme (NPP) is the torchbearer for this government’s policy and the primary means for reintroducing officers to the beat. The scale of the task cannot be underestimated as
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