Safer Streets funding

Published Friday 27 October, 2023
Last updated on Thursday 22 February, 2024

Action will be taken to tackle antisocial behaviour, violence against women and girls, and neighbourhood crime in Sheerness and Sittingbourne town Centres.

Swale Borough Council, through the Community Safety Partnership, worked with the Kent Police and Crime Commissioner to secure £323,000 from the Government’s Safer Streets Fund.

The money will be invested into measures in the town Centres that will help tackle the higher level of crime, ASB and violence against women and girls, such as:

• Funding for additional youth programs, that can challenge the behaviour and perceptions of young people towards crime
• seven new fixed site security cameras and three Rapid Deployment CCTV Cameras
• more lighting, CCTV, and other general improvements to specified parks and open spaces, creating a safer environment for the children of the area while also discouraging antisocial behaviour in green spaces
• investment into a Community Engagement Programme for the Beachfields area, to enable greater community ownership and activity within the space.
• increasing community guardianship activities within these areas, including the introduction of Street Marshalls whose work will help to keep the streets safer
• offering Active Bystander training to people who work at night in the town centre, which gives them the knowledge and skills to challenge the unacceptable behaviour of others in public
• investment into Swale Link, which helps prevent crime by providing businesses with ways to share information about incidents. Including reports of shop lifters and anti-social behaviour, by providing radio equipment for them to stay connected with other businesses
• additional monitoring of empty premises that attract antisocial behaviour. For example, the empty Sheerness library will receive new fencing.

The measures will be delivered over two years, costing £154,000 in the first year and £169,000 in the second.

Cllr Richard Palmer, the chair of the Community Committee, said:

“Making sure people feel safe in the borough is one of our top priorities.

“The Safer Streets Fund was a chance to bring in additional resources to support work being done by ourselves and the police to tackle issues that really matter to local people.

“Of course, we would have loved to try to get even more resources to tackle the issues in other parts of the borough, but the criteria for which areas would receive funding were quite limiting, so we had to make sure we put together a plan that would secure the funding.

“These town centres are bustling and lively hubs of our community, so by making those streets safer, the surrounding areas and the whole of the borough will be safer too.

“This funding will help fund initiatives that have already proven successful in combating crime such as investing in youth programs, improving parks, new CCTV and much more.

“I would like to thank the Police and Crime Commissioner and the Home Office for this funding, this will have a very real, permanent and positive impact on the safety of our streets.”