Category: Home safety

Island Gardens Community meeting

Island Gardens Community meeting

Local residents and area users are cordially invited to our Come and talk event.

Venue is

Island Point, Sark Mews Community Hall, Westferry Road, London E14 3PW

Date, Time: Monday, 20. February 2023 from 6pm – 7:30pm

We’ve invited Councillors and local SNT Police officers.

Meet your local coordinator Syed Shofor Ali.

contact us for queries about this event

Help improve fire safety in Tower Hamlets

Tower Hamlets Housing Forum and London Fire Brigade are working together to promote fire safety in our borough, and we want to involve residents in getting the message out.
 
We are making a series of short films where you can discuss your fire safety concerns or issues that you’ve experienced with someone from London Fire Brigade. They will offer advice and guidance to help you.
 The content that we create will be used across social channels and partner websites to promote fire safety and signpost residents to further sources of information and advice.
 We are looking for up to 10 community contributors, from a range of backgrounds to represent the diversity of Tower Hamlets.
 
We will be offering a £50 voucher, as  a  thank you to everyone who participates in the project.
 Closing date for applications 31 March 2022

For more information, contact: Lisa McCann,

 Fire Safety Team Leader

t. 07984451667

e. lisa.mccann@thh.org.uk

Neighbourhood Watch

is an important initiative, which enables Neigbhours to improve their feeling of owning their Neighbourhoods. Whilst making each other stronger through like-minded conversations, based around crime reduction and well-being, that feeling of always being victims of Anti-social behaviour or crime can be combatted by active neighbour collaborations.

The Met Business Plan 2020-23 mentions some initiatives like Street watch and School watch.

“Over the course of 2019/20, we promoted crime prevention by supporting numerous community initiatives. Street Watch involves local volunteers assisted on patrols, events and road closures, missing persons, weapons sweeps, days of action and leaflet drops. School Watch, a scheme initiated by Safer Schools officers, mobilises the school community (schools staff, parents, sixth formers, etc.) to promote safety and reassurance for children, providing visibility as pupils travel home from school, preventing anti-social behaviour and crime on that route.”

School watch is easily enabled with the presence of officers in schools who can attend assemblies and parents evenings.

Street watch is often enabled via the MET volunteer scheme, which can be attended by those not having to work at the time of the activity. As MET volunteer to get allocated a volunteer number and get regular invitations to participate.

Operation Venice was mentioned by one user on NextDoor today as a good way of making your phone theft part of this scheme, aimed at combatting Motor-cycle based crime.

“Crime prevention is embedded in all parts of our operational activity. Moped-enabled crime in London reduced by 42.5 per cent since the inception of Operation Venice. This activity was supported by two communication campaigns: Lock, Chain, Cover – prevention campaign aimed at promoting greater security for powered two-wheeler scooters and moped, and Look up. Look out – crime prevention campaign targeted at robbery utilising disruptive approaches such as mobile ads designed to pop up and encourage people distracted by their phones to be more aware of their surroundings and to keep valuables out of sight.”

For those who can attend regular meetings and who have an interest in helping police devise new strategies the Independent Advisory Groups IAGs are ideal.

“In efforts to improve confidence and satisfaction amongst some communities where it is lower, we implemented a number of changes. The Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) set up a new Independent Advisory Group with a wide range of community members from across London to advise
on a range of challenging issues such as the manner in which the Met responds to public complaints and officer misconduct. The IAG members are also part of high profile operational Gold Groups to provide critical friend advice and guidance. We also launched our first cohort of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender/Transsexual plus (LGBT+) advisers who work proactively with partners and the public to increase community engagement, crime prevention and active citizenship in order to build trust and
confidence.”

We’d support all these schemes, but none can replace the residents led Neighbourhood Watch schemes because talking to your neighbours cannot be replaced by anything else.

All these schemes like

  • street watch
  • school watch
  • IAG
  • Gold groups

as mentioned above are police run schemes and rely on their management of it.

Neighbourhood Watch in contrast is perpetually run by Neighbours who organise themselves and are run by Neighbours themselves. Your police run scheme may become redundant after a couple of years but Neighbourhood Watch continues to exist, as it does already since 40 years. We do run Street parties for the Queen’s Jubilee or organise litter picks, food distribution in times of hardship and do many other activities like tree planting and keeping areas nice.

We need reliable, safety conscious individuals to set up and run schemes.

THINK – WIDEN – burglary prevention campaign

British households worry about burglary more than any other crime

  • Two thirds (67%) of respondents to the Neighbourhood Watch Crime and Community Survey 2021 were concerned about becoming a victim of burglary
  • There are evidence-based, simple and effective measures we can all take to reduce our chance of being burgled by up to 50%.
  • Victims of burglary are more likely to be re-targete

New research shows two thirds (67%) of people are worried about their home being broken into, yet there are simple, proven measures we can all take to reduce our chances of becoming a victim of burglary by up to 50%.

Ensuring your home has a combination of the WIDE features is proven to be most effective – and can be done in any home on a variety of budgets. Neighbours keeping an eye out for each other is key to reducing burglary, so they have extended the well-known WIDE acronym to WIDE(N).

  • WWINDOWS: Keep your windows locked
  • I INTERIOR: Put interior lights on a timer
  • D DOORS: Double or deadlock your doors
  • EEXTERIOR: Put exterior lights on a sensor
  • NNEIGHBOURS: Keep an eye out for your neighbours

If you have been burgled recently, criminals know what’s in your house and may come back soon or once you have had time to purchase new items. Act soon to avoid being retargeted. Use the WIDEN advice for a combination of simple, yet effective prevention measueres.

To help people feel safer in their homes, Neighbourhood Watch has joined forces with their longstanding premium partner, ERA Home Security, to launch the THINK WIDEN burglary prevention campaign, providing people of all ages and living circumstances with clear guidance on securing their home.

John Hayward-Cripps, CEO of Neighbourhood Watch Network, said ‘It is not okay for two thirds of people to fear being burgled. More needs to be done to help people be and feel safer, and when it comes to burglary, prevention is always better than cure. Since 1982 we have been supporting communities to feel and e safer, and we know that by securing your home’s windows, interior, doors, exterior and keeping an eye out for neighbours, we can all give ourselves the bet chance of not being burgled.

Throughout 2022, Neighbourhood Watch is celebrating 40 years of community work by hundreds of thousands of volunteers. The first schemes were set up in 1982 to address burglary, and whilst they now address a wide variety of crime types, from modern slavery to cybercrime, they have expert knowledge spanning 40 years providing burglary prevention advice. They are a trusted organisation, with their research showing nearly all (90%) of Neighbourhood Watch members sometimes or usually acting on advice they receive from the charity.

The research also showed that Neighbourhood Watch members are more likely to be satisfied with their personal safety than non-members (70% vs 62%), and the charity believes this is down to the tools, resources and connections it helps local communities to access. Members are more likely to be very satisfied or satisfied with their local area than on members (92% – 88%).

Thieves steal entry door scanners

This was a scanner

Home owners beware, thieves remove, damage, steal your entry door scanners, leaving residents unable to scan in, disabling security.

If your entry door scanner is easily removed, please change your system to a more secure one.

We are offering membership deals to service providers, sign up here. Residents get terrified because thieves will get entry to their blocks easier and can copy the data software from the device.

News from the Home Office

My enquiry to the Home Office about the Neighbourhood Watch efficiently working with all crime reduction partners in Tower Hamlets has now been answered.

We have been given the heads up, the matter was referred to the Crime Strategy and Performance Unit. Whilst we heard at the same date that major drug busts in Britain led to the seizure of over 220.000 units of illegal drugs, we need to concentrate on our efforts of keeping crime down and working to the best of our ability to keep our communities safe.

Drugs present one of the biggest dangers to the integrity of our nation, our families and our future, of course terrorism is an equally blatant danger.

So regardless how many spanners are thrown in the works of resolving crime, we still need to push forward helping to reduce it. We must have a Zero Tolerance policy on drug dealing and consumption and on Terrorism amongst ourselves. Our watch groups are strictly prohibited from working with unsavoury organisations.

If you have information about drugs, report it immediately.

We provide you with tools to handle both problems efficiently.

For constant updates on Terrorism we provide the ACT App to our members, giving us

regular up-dates from the policy makers, advice on how to handle dangerous situations to do with terrorist attacks and prevention and courses.

If you have any information about drugs, you may report this via our own anonymous reporting tool, which does not require you to give any information about yourself, nor do you need to talk to anyone to report.

In fact there is a vast array of reporting options to do so.

Please register with Ourwatch to get the latest news from our national and local partners and the police.

All faiths welcome

Also people who do not have a faith are welcome.

The Tower Hamlets Interface Forum brought people from different religions and communities together with speakers from various organisations.

It’s really important that all stand together and repel attempts to attack communities or groups of another faith. Nothing should stop anybody to report suspicious behaviour to the police.

Our stall at the #Interfaithweek

Bridge over Troubled Water

event was well stocked with information about worldly danger and solutions.

One attendee loved this ‘Power of Hello’ poster because they recognised their language.
Fire safety

Fire safety

I am writing to inform you that the London Fire Brigade has launched a new Home Fire Safety Checker aimed at offering residents an online fire risk assessment in their individual homes to complement our free Home Fire Safety Visit programme.

This innovative online tool allows residents to receive tailored fire safety advice based on the type of property they live in, as well as behaviours commonly associated with fire risk. The Checker guides them around their home to help them identify any potential fire risks and hazards, then provides advice as to how they can take steps to reduce those risks.  The assessment could be carried out on their behalf by a carer or family member, if appropriate.

Though we continue to offer free in-person Home Fire Safety Visits (london-fire.gov.uk/safety/the-home/home-fire-safety), we want to focus these visits on the most vulnerable in our communities; the Online Checker is an easy-to-use tool for everyone that will signpost them towards booking an in-person visit if any significant risks are raised.

Please share the Home Fire Safety Checker, found on our website at london-fire.gov.uk/safety/the-home/home-fire-safety with your residents. If you would like more information on Home Fire Safety or the Checker, please contact us at CSDevTeam@London-fire.gov.uk