New Chief Constable praises community safety team

Richard Lewis gave the ringing endorsement after meeting members of the team during a visit to Hartlepool.

The team, which was officially launched last year, brings together staff from Hartlepool Borough Council, Cleveland Police and Cleveland Fire Brigade under one roof at Hartlepool Police Station in Avenue Road.

It aims to improve information sharing and ensure that Hartlepool communities benefit from a co-ordinated approach to community safety issues, with a particular focus on prevention.

Mr Lewis said: “I am not sure that people realise just how rare this kind of successful partnership working is. It is a blueprint for how organisations should be working together.”

New Cleveland Chief Constable Richard Lewis (centre, right) and Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner Barry Coppinger (centre, left) with members of the Hartlepool Community Safety Team

The team has enjoyed some high-profile successes, including obtaining closure orders against three flats in Wynyard Mews that were at the centre of drugs activity and other criminal behaviour and a two-year injunction against a Hartlepool woman who subjected her neighbours to years of harassment.

Mr Lewis added: “The most telling thing about the level of partnership working taking place within the team is that when you walk into the room you can’t immediately tell which agency individual members of staff work for.

“It is a model for how to deliver services that focus on prevention and respond to the needs of the community, and in an ideal world it is something I would like to see replicated across the Cleveland Police force area.”

Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner Barry Coppinger who accompanied Mr Lewis on his visit, added: “The integrated community safety work being carried out in Hartlepool is leading the way in terms of the Cleveland area. Working ever closer together means we are getting ever better results.”