Dear {FIRST NAME},

Welcome to the April edition of your neighbourhood policing newsletter.

Over the last three months, your Wisbech Neighbourhood Policing Team have been focussing on three main areas as their local priorities, based on feedback from the community.

Street drinking and associated anti-social behaviour in Wisbech town centre – The partnership Operation Luscombe Hub met on seven occasions providing the opportunity for those identified to be offered support based on an individual needs assessment. Our regular patrols have continued, with our team having committed more than 100 hours to the operation. 

Of the 66 people referred into the hub, only 13 people have had to be dealt with beyond the initial attendance or coming to police attention. This ultimately means 53 people – 80% of referrals – have curtailed their behaviour or have sought the support they needed to ensure they are no longer coming to police attention.

This priority will remain for the new quarter with ever increasing patrols and a focus as we move into the summer months and the likelihood of people being outside more. 

Shoplifting in the Horsefair Shopping Centre – This was a new priority set at the beginning of the quarter and will remain throughout the next quarter. Officers have worked hard to tackle the issues including:

As a result, there have been 56 reported shoplifting offences in the Horsefair between 1st January and 31st March in comparison to only 16 recorded in the three months leading up to Christmas. This supports our initial hypothesis of a lack of reporting, not an increase in crime itself.

With increased reports we can now look to implement ‘phase two’ of the operation and take robust enforcement against offenders. This approach will be designed and taken forward over the next few months.

Anti-social use of pedal cycles (including lack of lights) across the sector – The team have conducted a number of high-visibility and plain-clothed patrols in relation to this priority, as well as days of action offering education and advice. After an initial education and advice approach, we moved to issuing fixed penalty notices for not having lights on a pedal cycle, but in doing so offered a grace period of 10 days from the time a person was stopped by police.

If the individual was then able to provide proof of purchase including physically being shown the bike now has lights, the fixed penalty notice was cancelled. Failure to comply resulted in a fixed penalty notice being processed.

This saw a 50% acceptance rate with 50% of those issued a notice having gone on to purchase and provide proof of lights. The others were prosecuted. Education around bike safety and use of lights was offered and accepted to several schools and will continue in the months ahead. This will no longer form part of the three highlighted priorities but will remain on the team’s radar. 

Kind Regards,

Inspector Michael Basford
Fenland Neighbourhood Policing Team

Current priorities for your Wisbech Neighbourhood Policing Team

(Covering Wisbech and surrounding areas including; Elm, Friday Bridge, Coldham, Guyhirn, Murrow, Wisbech St Mary, Leverington, Tydd Gote, Tydd St Giles, Parsons Drove, Newton)

Every three months we use a combination of our own data and your feedback via our community policing survey to set three priorities for each of our neighbourhood policing teams to focus on for the coming quarter.

Between April and June this year, your Wisbech team are prioritising:

What we’ve been up to across the sector (in pictures!)

You can find more like this on our Policing Fenland Facebook page.

Crime prevention and useful information

The warmer weather has finally arrived! While we don’t want to put a dampener on it (no pun intended), we would like to take the opportunity to remind you have home security and taking precautions to protect your home from potential burglars.

To minimize the risk of burglary during spring and summer:

You can find more burglary prevention advice on our dedicated home security webpages.

Court news

You can find more articles like these in the news section of our website.

Finally, your information helps us to understand the types of issues affecting you and your local community and informs our quarterly neighbourhood policing priorities. To have your say, please head to our community policing survey.

Please DO NOT use this form to report a crime – this should be done either via our website’s online reporting forms or webchat service, or by calling 101. Always dial 999 in an emergency.

Kind regards,