Our engagement strategy

Why engaging communities is important to Northumbria Police

To effectively build trust and confidence, it is really important that we identify and understand the issues that affect our local communities.

We want to deliver an outstanding police service, to prevent crime and disorder and to protect the most vulnerable people from harm.

Engagement is key to this and the way we interact, listen, and learn from our communities, will help us deliver our vision.

Engagement can take many forms, whether it be through an event, speaking to us in the street, through social media, or in the way we support victims of crime. Effective engagement enhances our relationship with the public, and allows our communities to shape local policing services.

Our engagement strategy seeks to deliver our force priorities, which are:

• Protect the vulnerable
• Effective justice
• Prevent crime and disorder
• Outstanding organisation
• Intelligent policing
• Engaged communities

This is how our engagement strategy supports each priority.

Protect the vulnerable

• We will seek to develop engagement methods that are bespoke to our diverse communities to enable effective dialogue
• We will use engagement to help us to identify vulnerable individuals and increase trust in our response to encourage reporting
• We will strive to understand the vulnerabilities within our communities through targeted engagement to increase confidence and improve reporting
• We will utilise data available to us to better understand the landscape of our communities and provide a service to suit our communities’ needs
• We will provide greater focus on community engagement to inform and support our Neighbourhood Policing Strategy
• We will work together with partners to share information and identify risks to the most vulnerable individuals in our community at the earliest opportunity
• We will provide bespoke crime prevention support and advice to meet the individual needs of our diverse communities

Effective justice

• We will provide effective support and education to our communities to improve victim, witness and community confidence in the criminal justice process
• We will use data available to us to identify opportunities to engage with our marginalised groups to improve trust and confidence in reporting
• We will work collaboratively with partners to ensure our victims have access to advice and support to suit their individual needs throughout their criminal justice journey
• We will ensure we provide consistent messaging to our communities to promote positive criminal justice outcomes
• We will actively seek to keep our partners and communities up to date with information around emerging crime trends on a national and local level

Prevent crime and disorder

• We will share current crime prevention advice with our communities to reduce victimisation
• We will work closely with partners and communities to use crime prevention design techniques to reduce the risk of crime and disorder
• We will seek to identify risks at the earliest stage and provide support to reduce the likelihood of individuals from becoming victims or perpetrators
  of crime
• We will actively listen to our communities to understand their priorities and concerns. This will enable us to respond to any risks identified
• We will involve our communities in problem-solving solutions to improve engagement and encourage information-sharing - to support early identification of crime and antisocial behaviour trends

Outstanding organisation

• We will seek to better understand our communities to ensure our officers are equipped to meet their needs
• We will use feedback from our partners and communities to ensure we learn from previous incidents to ensure a more inclusive and responsive culture within our organisation
• We will ensure our staff work in collaboration with our communities to solve problem
• We will actively engage with our communities to ensure we recruit individuals in to our organisation which are representative of the community we serve
• We will ensure our staff understand their roles and responsibilities to help them to engage and collaborate with key stakeholders effectively
• We will keep our communities up to date in relation to critical incidents to maintain trust, confidence and cohesion
• We will closely monitor our internal and external engagement to ensure it is purposeful and co-ordinated

Intelligent policing

• We will seek to improve the way we share data and information with our partners to ensure a consistent approach to engagement
• We will look for new ways of working to purposefully engage with our new, existing and emerging communities to make sure we meet their needs and understand their priorities
• We will work in partnership with our stakeholders and community to identify and address threat, harm and risk at the earliest opportunity
• We will modernise public contact to improve the services our communities get when they contact Northumbria Police
• We will utilise modern communication methods to share key messages with our communities to offer reassurance and increase trust in the way we engage
• We will listen to community feedback and analyse data available to us to understand what successful engagement looks and feels like for our communities
• We will involve and consult with our communities to allow scrutiny of our data to ensure we are transparent and legitimate in our approach to policing

Engaged communities

• We will tailor our methods of engagement to ensure that the way we deliver our policing service meets our community’s needs and priorities
• We will utilise our community partnerships to positively inspire change and deliver our vision and priorities
• We will provide a service which is accessible and inclusive to all groups within our communities
• We will involve key partners and representatives from our local communities and groups in our scrutiny panels
• We will capture our engagement activity, measuring our intended and actual success to ensure our engagement is targeted and meaningful
• We will adapt the way we engage with our communities to provide support and develop community resilience
• We will create and utilise our neighbourhood profiles to better understand our communities and prioritise our policing activity based on their needs
• We will recognise, celebrate and share best practice with partners to increase public confidence and promote future partnership collaboration