Ros Hathorn's campaign

A spate of anti social behaviour in summer 2023 lead to a lot of work in and with the community.  My District Council colleagues helped organise two extraordinary community safety meetings. which really helped community voices be heard by agencies such as the police and councils so that a greater understanding of the issues could be developed and solutions found. 

The County Council funded a youth worker which was supplemented with additional funding my colleague District Cllr Sunita Hansraj managed to get from the Police and Crime Commissioner, the Community Council also fund a lot of youth work. Significant work has taken place since that time particularly focussing on the transition to secondary school and the situation has improved significantly.   Things aren’t perfect and issues can flare up but there is a community approach to managing them which is working.  A good example of this is a hedgerow was planted around the community orchard last summer, within a week it had been vandalised but….. after an outcry on social media by the following morning the damage had been made good. It’s not known who put things right at the orchard but it feels as though the community is more in control and that issues can be worked through more easily. 

I brought in the social work team and the communities service from the county council to start talking to community partners and finding solutions. Having nurtured a good relationship between Orchard Park school and North Cambridge Academy we were able to use this alongside the excellent and committed community council staff to find solutions. This lead to the county council using Orchard Park and the north of Cambridge as a trial area for a police lead youth work approach to reduce anti social behaviour.