Wards policing consultation forms - tell us what you think

• Consultation form
• Follow up form

About ward panels

What are ward panels?

As our wards policing teams engage with communities through various methods such as meetings or contact points, they will gain an insight into the local community’s crime and disorder concerns. In order to ensure that the City of London Police is focused on resolving these problems we require a process to involve local people to decide the priorities for their local Ward Policing Operation Team to work on.

Part of this process requires that a Ward Panel is established, made up of local people who will assess the different concerns requiring police or partner involvement and establish priorities for policing in the ward area. The panel are effectively ‘tasking’ the Ward Policing Operations Team.

How will the ward panels decide policing priorities?

The panel will decide priorities for the ward by examining the results of community consultation and research, such as the ward consultation form. It will also include results from public events such as meetings where the community have voiced concerns.

The purpose of the Ward panel is to agree a realistic and achievable course of action to address the issues raised by the community. The panel need to meet regularly, probably every 8-10 weeks. As described above the panel will assess the information collected by police and other sources and consider how to prioritise the community concerns for action. A manageable number of priorities would be 3-5.

At subsequent meetings the panel will review previous priorities and monitor progress. When a priority has been resolved the community will receive a follow up consultation form and the ward panel will prioritise a new problem.

Who will be the members of ward panels?

The panel should be made up of local people who live and/or work in the area. These people will be identified through the various engagement activities carried out on the ward. It is important to seek new people and ensure that the group is representative of the community. This will ensure the panel is not seen as being just the usual community voices. The group should involve participants who have the support of local people. This may be achieved by nominations being made at public meetings or events. This will avoid any impression that the panel is imposed by the police and also ensure a wide range of people can take part in prioritising issues. An ideal size for the group would be about 15 people from the Ward.

The Ward panel may also benefit from the involvement of the local Ward councillor. The role of the councillor is to observe the process and contribute their local knowledge of problems. The councillor should abstain from deciding the priorities in order that the delivery of services is not seen to be affected by politics.

Evolvement of a City of London Police Ward Panel