The Suzy Lamplugh Trust have published their analysis of where the most violent and safest places are to live in the UK; Lewisham is apparently the 10th most violent. They say they are calling on:

the local authorities concerned to look at why they are in the situation they are in and what they can do to improve it.

You can download their detailed workings here which show Lewisham moving from 20th to 10th most violent area over the last year.

In the local paper the police are quoted saying:

“The increases in violent crime have been at the less serious end of the scale including harassment and common assault arising from domestic violence situations.

“We will strive to better our past achievements and still further reduce crime, but it should be remembered that for the majority of people in the borough, Lewisham remains a vibrant, exciting and safe place to live, work and enjoy.”

You’ll remember that Steve Bullock wrote to councillors about crime quite recently and that the Local Strategic Partnership have recently put in place the strategy they’ll be working to in respect of crime.

The action plan which accompanies the strategy details the actions the partners are going to be taking. These include:

• Develop an assessment for serious violence to map violent crime hotspots (temporal, geographic and situational) and target resources in relation to this data, using a problem profile where necessary
• Targeted interventions on known violent offenders including sexual offenders
• Effective Investigation of Serious Violent Crime
• Effective Investigation of Assaults with Injury
• Targeted activity to reduce incidents of gun and knife crime across the borough
• Targeted activity to prevent Serious Sexual Offences through promoting personal safety
• Effective investigation of Racial and Homophobic crime
• Proactive targeting of licensed premises most at risk of contributing to incidents of violent crime.
• Work within the ‘alliance’ project in relation to targeting gang members
• Develop information sharing mechanisms between the police and health in relation to
  violence.
• Increase engagement with A and E to develop pathways into alcohol treatment
• Use of Restorative Justice between parties where concerns are known before escalation
• Prolific and other Priority Offender programme to target offenders involved in serious violence and gang related activity and devise multi-agency response
• Identify work within schools regarding safety and education on weapon use and gangs
• Increasing support to victims of violent crime
• Further development of communications approaches to managing ‘violent crime’

There are separate actions for domestic violence which are equally comprehensive:

• Set up a Multi-agency Risk Assessment conference (MARAC) to improve our coordinated response to reported domestic violence
• Effective investigation of domestic violence incidents
• Increase the use of “Sanctuary” scheme
• Develop programmes of intervention for perpetrators of domestic violence
• Implement the “Westminster training programme” in schools
• Increase information sharing with voluntary sectors, and increase 3rd party reporting sites in the Borough

Whether these things will have an immediate impact on the borough’s ranking we’ll have to wait and see.