Community Safety Annual Report for Moray highlights progress

Under the Antisocial Behaviour etc. (Scotland) Act 2004 each local authority must prepare a strategy for dealing with antisocial behaviour within the area. For Moray this is included within the Community Safety Strategy 2022-2026, as endorsed by the Community Planning Board on the 21 September 2022.

The Community Safety Annual Report is the first performance report for the Community Safety Strategy.

The report highlights notable successes but also some challenges. Following the Covid pandemic and cuts to budgets, partners have had to rebuild their networks, alliances and working methodologies. While good progress has been made in many areas there have been continued issues due to the changes to the workforce and priorities throughout the pandemic and the subsequent increase in anti-social behaviour.

The recommendations from the annual report reflect these changes:

• Improve partnership working with individual partners and strategic partnerships across the system.
• Move to more Dynamic Reporting and timeous partner updates for Community Safety Hub cases is needed to make the Hub more effective.
• Development of new partnership projects that meet emerging need rather than ‘business as usual’, particularly around ASB.
• Review the Outcome Measures to fit with a more focussed approach to Community Safety.
• Consider the findings of the ASB Task and Finish Group, and report to the Community Planning Partnership.
• Set up the Mental Health Task and Finish Group and then consider the findings and report to the Community Planning Partnership.

The Anti-Social Behaviour Task and Finish Group, which was set up in September 2023 to examine the increase in Anti-Social Behaviour is developing proposals for action across the partnership to address the issues and this will be reported to a future meeting of the committee.