Issue - meetings

Motion

Meeting: 27/03/2019 - Council (Item 101)

A period of up to one hour is allocated to consider the motions on notice. This may only be extended with the agreement of the Council.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Action against Knife Crime

Members considered the following Notice of Motion submitted by Councillor L. Mallett:

“Council notes the recent triple stabbing incident over the Birmingham border in Northfield, as well as incidents in our District and the growing rate of knife crime across the UK.

Council believes that key to tackling knife crime is integrated working across services including the police, education, health and youth services. Council is concerned about the impact of cuts to youth services and policing upon the ability to tackle this growing problem.

Council calls on the Leader and Cabinet to:

a) Write to Sajid Javid and the PCC to ask them to address Council on the issue of knife crime and police funding

b) To reaffirm our funding for youth projects in Bromsgrove and to encourage our partners to support knife crime reduction programmes.

c) To call on Worcestershire County Council to reinstate funding for publicly funded youth services in the District, and to support initiatives in education to keep knives out of our schools. “

The Motion was proposed by Councillor L. Mallett and seconded by Councillor C. Bloore.

In proposing the Motion Councillor Mallett firstly, confirmed that he was a trustee of a local youth charity, but did not believe that this was an interest which needed to be declared. He went on to highlight that there were hundreds of young people who had lost their lives from the growing knife crisis. Statistics showed that this was a crime, which had been on the rise and since 2015 had almost doubled to 40,000 per annum. This was a serious issue and he hoped that Members could reach a consensus as they had the ability to be able to do something about the growing problem. He believed that the cuts at both national and County Council level had impacted on this, in particular with the cuts to youth provision. The library cuts would further impact on the services, as many libraries were also used as a meeting place for many members of the community. The reduction in early intervention services had also played its part in isolating those in most need of support. The issue had been compounded by the reduction of Police officers, whilst it was acknowledged that the Police and Crime Commissioner was hoping to put more Police on the streets, this would in reality only take the County back to its position in 2010 before the cuts had begun to take effect. There had been a drastic cut in the number of youth workers and a clear link had been shown between the cuts and an increase in the level of crime.

Councillor Mallett went on to make reference to the recent knife attack in Northfield which was on the board with the District and that there had been arrests in Bromsgrove for possession of knives and that it was likely that there would soon be an incident where someone was injured in Bromsgrove if action was not taken soon. ... view the full minutes text for item 101