WEST Devon is one of the safest places to live in the whole of the UK — that was the conclusion of a Community Safety Partnership report released last week after the first year of a three-year strategy was completed.
Since the introduction of the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, the police, county and borough councils have had to form a partnership to address community safety issues. Other groups such as the probation service, the youth offending teams, youth services, education and social services have also been drawn in.
The partnership has identified seven specific areas — burglary, traffic and speed, drugs and alcohol, youth issues, fear of crime, equality and diversity and domestic violence — and action teams have been set up to ensure progress.
Neighbourhood Watch schemes have been credited with helping to make burglary comparatively rare in West Devon, which occupies 17th place out of the 420 district councils in England and Wales.
Although West Devon has a very low crime rate, the report says the fear of crime, particularly house burglary, features high among local people. It says this is being tackled by offering an accurate picture of crime in the district, through the media and link groups into the community, such as Neighbourhood Watch.
But the fear of crime team is also exploring the introduction of closed circuit television for both Tavistock and Okehampton town centres.
Rural roads are a well-known problem area. The traffic and speed group is using a variety of measures to try and bring down the speed of traffic and to improve the safety for young people going to and from school. These include enforcement, police involvement in traffic schemes and engineering solutions such as A30 improvements and smaller schemes such as at Sourton.
Education is the major peg in a strategy to tackle drug and alcohol problems, with funding secured to support schemes in Tavistock and Okehampton community colleges. Further funding is being sought to help people suffering serious drug and alcohol problems.
The report admits young people are often identified as a problem, but says they are more likely to be the victims of crime. The youth issues group is actively seeking the views of the local youth.
The report says that other groups, such as minority races and gay and lesbians, are also particularly vulnerable to crime and the West Devon community safety partnership has undertaken equality training as well as developing inter-agency links to help provide support for victims of crime or harassment, which has occurred as a result of their racial background or sexuality.
For victims of domestic violence a support service has been set up in West Devon with funding obtained from Comic Relief. This is expected to be up and running by November this year.
A spokesman for the partnership said they believed its work had demonstrated what could be achieved through working together.
'West Devon is an extremely safe place to live and we are far less likely to be victims of crime in West Devon than anywhere else in the country.
'The partnership wants this to continue and is striving to make life in West Devon safer still — we are proud of what has been achieved in this the first year of our three-year strategy.'