Agenda and draft minutes

Attendees were welcomed to the meeting and introduced themselves.

Apologies for absence were received from Councillor Sarah Nelmes, Ros Nerio, Keith Harland, Andrew Palfreyman, March Kahn, Michael Nadasdy, Tamara Valmas, Karen Stephanou and Enoch Kanagaraj.

Shivani Davé, Partnerships Manager, presented the final terms of reference for Connecting Three Rivers, which represented a re-branding and merger of the Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) and Community Safety Board (CSB) meetings.  It was explained that merging the boards would facilitate attendance for those partners who were invited to both, as they had previously sometimes been unable to both, due to the length of the meetings. 

The new arrangement would mean that more of the public community safety information would be taken in the first part of the meeting, with confidential matters to be taken in the second part.   In response to a question Shivani Davé advised that future meetings would be themed, to ensure that all of the objectives set out in the terms of reference and Community Strategy were covered.

Councillor Sarah Nelmes and Keith Harland were elected as Chair and Vice-Chair respectively.

As neither was present, Councillor Andrew Scarth was elected as Chair for the meeting.

The minutes of the Local Strategic Partnership Board meeting, held on 26 September 2024 were confirmed as a correct record.

Elizabeth Borg of Community Learning Partnership (CLP) provided an update that the Partnership had completed stage 1 of the DWP funded project ‘Connect to Work’, to be run by Step to Skills at Hertfordshire County Council.  This employability project focused on working with those with protected characteristics and other barriers to employment.  It involved working quickly with clients who wanted to work and providing them with a mentor / employment adviser who would place them in work or voluntary experience with a company as well as working with the employer.  The CLP was now looking to progress to stage 2. 

Engaging under-represented communities on the topic of climate change.

Ellie Nathan, Net Zero Innovation Project Manager, delivered a presentation which provided an update on community conversations activity which the Council would be undertaking in the new year with Involve consultants to engage marginalised and under-represented communities in Three Rivers on the topic of climate change.

The Council had been provided support, funded by Innovate UK, to work with Involve to deliver a community conversations exercise which would help capture detailed insights into the priorities, concerns, wants and needs of residents in the context of climate change.  The aim was to engage residents from a broad range of backgrounds, including marginalised and under-represented groups, and the output of the exercise was to be a vision of what a positive and equitable response to climate change could look like, alongside a set of actionable recommendations for the Council.  Participants would be paid for their time at the hourly living wage rate and expenses would also be covered, to facilitate participation by diverse and marginalised groups.  There was also a budget for additional accommodations such as translation.

The exercise would involve 20 residents, aged 18 to 55 years, conducting conversations with friends, family and others in their communities on what people like about Three Rivers, how climate change may be tackled to make the district a better place to live, and how the Council and communities could work together to make that happen.  The 20 participants would come together at four in-person sessions: two sessions to receive training and learn about climate change before having conversations with a least 5 people in their community, and two sessions to share feedback.  The outputs would feed into the Council’s Climate Strategy and Action Plan and future sustainability work.

The slides of the presentation can be seen here:

Action - Board members were asked for their help in advertising the project as widely as possible within their networks.

Allocation presentation to finalise spend.

Elizabeth Borg of Community Learning left the room for this item, as Community Learning had made an application to the fund.

Shivani Davé, Partnerships Manager, reported that the community raffle had taken place for the Connecting Three Rivers fund pot earlier in the year, and had raised £603.77.  The Council had also contributed a further £4000 into the pot from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

The Fund had been opened for applications in September.  Bids were required to meet the priorities as set by this group.  These had included promoting local employment and volunteering opportunities; developing and co-ordinating the voluntary sector; tackling hate crime and improving community cohesion; and tackling and preventing serious youth violence and anti-social behaviour.

16 applications to the Fund had been received, with requests ranging from £700 to £2000.  Some applications had not met any of the listed priorities; all applications had been deliberated by the Advisory Group. 

All applications had been reviewed and scored and the highest scoring applications had been from Nine Lives, Electric Umbrella and Southwest Herts Community Transport (t/a Roundabout Transport).  A gap was identified for the priority ‘tackling and preventing serious youth violence and anti social behaviour’. The Community Safety Coordinating Group had proposed £853.77 should be allocated towards Crucial Crew.  

The slides of the presentation can be seen here:

The Board agreed these grants from the fund and noted that it was hoped that further income could be generated for the pot, to enable further grants to be made from the fund periodically in the future.

A presentation from Herts Mind Network.

Danielle Levy of Herts Mind Network gave a presentation on the community support service, highlighting that funding for the service was now under threat.

The service had been running in Three Rivers since 2017, covering the area of Three Rivers specifically, and was delivered in partnership with the Council and members of the Community Safety Partnership.  It was aimed at those who did not meet the criteria for statutory services, but who were presenting to organisations such as housing associations or the police as having mental health as a primary need.   The aim was to reduce the use of police, crisis services, ASB, and housing associations where the primary need was related to mental health.  However, whilst mental health was the primary need, all needs were met in a holistic way before contact with the service was concluded.  As a result, the re-referral rate was very low.  Outreach support was provided, and examples of support included drug and alcohol support; supporting people to appointments; and assisting with completion of benefit forms.  The support provided was not time limited.  The service also operated by way of an open referral pathway, so that an existing diagnosis was not required.

Over the last 18 months 153 referrals had been received, all of which had been managed by two part-time workers.  Outcome measurements were used to assess progress.

Funding had come from a variety of sources over the years, including from the Council, PCC, housing associations and public health.

Bob Jones of Watford and Three Rivers Trust highlighted that there was a fundraising database on the Herts Community Leaders Forum website which provided details of funding sources, which may be of help.

Additionally, the Community Leaders Forum and VCSFE had been working with University of Hertfordshire on a standard impact measurement tool for the local voluntary sector which may be helpful in enabling evidence to be provided of the cost effectiveness of the service.

Bob Jones also highlighted the work of connectingthreerivers.org which helped organisations, community groups and charities to access funding to support vulnerable residents.

Action – Board Members were asked to widely promote and share connectingthreerivers.org.

The slides of the presentation can be seen here:

i.                 Police and Crime Commissioner – verbal update

ii.                County Community Safety Unit

Phoebe Allsopp of the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner provided a verbal update and reported that work was well underway to produce the Police and Crime Plan, which was required under statutory duty to be produced within the first year after a PCC election.  A draft outline had been presented to the most recent Police and Crime Panel, and the full plan would be shared at the next meeting in February. The public consultation stage had also been completed, during which process the most commonly reported factors in people feeling unsafe had been identified as: anti-social behaviour, using or dealing drugs, violent behaviour and dangerous driving.  These would therefore be factored into the Police and Crime Plan and its objectives. 

The Plan had six headings, which were currently in draft.  These were: preventing and deterring crime; strengthening local policing; getting tough on neighbourhood crime and anti-social behaviour; disrupting high harm criminality to protect vulnerable people and reduce violence; bringing more offenders to justice and supporting victims; and improving policing.  There would also be sections on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and Sustainability and Climate.  Action plans would sit below each of the headings.

Phoebe Allsopp also reported on the accountability and performance meetings which the PCC held monthly with the Chief Constable.  The November meeting had included the recent HMICFRS PEEL inspection, and actions from it would also be included in the Police and Crime Plan.  Topics at the December meeting had included anti-social behaviour and rural crime and actions to tackle these issues, as well as how officers responded to those in mental health crisis.

The PCC had also attended two rural crime forums held in collaboration with the National Farmers Union and the Rural Operational Support Team of the Constabulary.

The PCC had re-opened the fly-tipping on private land fund, which supported residents who had had fly tips on their land.

The three independent PCC scrutiny panels were now being held across the county at various venues, rather than on police estate, in order to improve accessibility and public participation.

The PCC had also run a county-wide Christmas card campaign, welcoming designs from children across the county on the topic of ‘helping people at Christmas’.  The selected design would be used as the card which was sent to the PCC’s colleagues and partners across Hertfordshire and nationally.

19 March 2025

18 June 2025

25 September 2025

11 December 2025

19 March 2025

18 June 2025

25 September 2025

11 December 2025