PB commitment in Policing Green Paper

Yesterday, the Home Office published From the Neighbourhood to the National: Policing our communities together - a green paper which sets out how the government intends on further improving policing and the ways it can deliver for the public.

Key to the way that government wants to improve policing is engaging and involving the communities the police serve.  The focus of this is neighbourhod policing and integrating neighbourhood policing with neighbourhood management - a key recommendation from the Flanagan Review. 

The Home Office has commited to working with Communities and Local Government to develop pilots for Community Safety Participatory Budgets with a few forces this year.  The idea is that the few pilots will create a knowledge base to help inform wider roll out of participatory budgeting in 2009.

The commitment in the Green Paper echos the commitment in the government's empowerment white paper: Communities in Control, published last week, but the green paper sets out a clearer commitment from the Home Office. 

The Green Paper also echos the Empowerment White Paper's suggestion of considering using participatory budgeting on monies recovered from criminals, as a way of establishing links between tackling crime and improving neighbourhoods so that justice could more clearly be seen to have been done. 

The PB Unit supports the Green Paper and is pleased to see the commitment to community engagement and involvement in policing and welcomes the opportunity to develop community safety pilots with the Home Office and Communities and Local Government.