Incidents in Customer First Centres - 475/20

Date Responded 22 April 2020

Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

You asked:

  1. Please list the number of occasions that Northumbria Police have been called to incidents at Whitley Bay, North Shields and Wallsend Customer First Centres for the period 2016-2020
  2. Please provide details of all meetings and subsequent advice between Northumbria Police and North Tyneside Council regarding anti social behaviour in Customer First Centres and libraries for the period 2016-2020
  3. Please provide details of advice given to NTC by Northumbria Police regarding steps they should take regarding anti social behaviour in Customer First Centres and libraries for the period 2016-2020
  4. Please provide information regarding Northumbria Police official position on antisocial behaviour in Customer First Centres and libraries for the period 2016-2020
  5. Please provide details of incidents involving “four named individuals” at Whitley Bay CFC and North Shields CFC

In Response:

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Northern Area Command and the relevant Neighbourhood Policing Teams of Northumbria Police.  I can confirm that the information you have requested is held, in part, by Northumbria Police.

I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows.

1. During the period 1 January 2016 to 19 March 2020 there have been a total of 266 incidents recorded against the three premises specified by your request.

2. There have been two meetings in 2019 at Wallsend Customer First Centre in relation to a rise in anti-social behaviour at the site.  Management and police discussed what response should be adopted and further supportive measures were implemented.

  • Advice that if immediate harm to persons or property then 999 should be used and all other lower risk matters then 101 should be used.  (All incidents reported to the police go through a THRIVE process to assess the threat/harm/risk that may be posed by the incident) and the most appropriate resource will be allocated to deal.
  • Neighbourhood Officers were tasked to the Wallsend Customer First Centre at key times to identify and disrupt offenders responsible.  This resulted in those responsible being arrested and incidents have reduced to normal levels.
  • There are also proposals to locate Wallsend Neighbourhood Policing Team to a room in the Wallsend Customer First Centre which should act as a deterrent and reduce the number of reported incidents.

With regards to Whitley Bay and North Shields Customer First Centres we hold not information in regards to any meetings being held during the period specified by your request.

3.  As per the above advice, if immediate harm to persons or property then call 999 and less urgent issues use 101.

4.  Anti-social behaviour is a Northumbria Police priority and appropriate resources will be deployed to tackle this type of harm to the local community.  Northumbria Police work closely with North Tyneside Council to identify and bring to justice all persons responsible for this type of crime and robust proportionate action will be taken against all persons identified for this type of behaviour.

5.  In relation to this part of your request, Northumbria Police can neither confirm nor deny that it holds the information you have requested as the duty in s1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 does not apply, by virtue of the following exemption:

S40(5)   Personal information

Under the Freedom of Information Act, information that is disclosed is released to the public as a whole and not just to the individual applicant.  As such, Northumbria Police would not wish to confirm or deny to the public at large whether information is held about any individuals.

You should consider this to be a refusal under section 17 of the Act.

No inference can be taken from this refusal that the information you have requested does or does not exist.

Disclaimer

Due to the different methods of recording information across 43 forces, a specific response from one constabulary should not be seen as an indication of what information could be supplied (within cost) by another. Systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. For this reason responses between forces may differ, and should not be used for comparative purposes.

The information we have supplied to you is likely to contain intellectual property rights of Northumbria Police. Your use of the information must be strictly in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) or such other applicable legislation. In particular, you must not re-use this information for any commercial purpose.

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