Now in their 7th year, the Marks & Spencer British Community Safety Awards are dedicated to rewarding community members and groups who work to reduce community crime, and fear of crime.

The Marks & Spencer British Community Safety Awards 2003, organised jointly with
Crime Concern and endorsed by the Home
Office, have announced this year’s top five winners from the 300 project entries received. They are as follows:

Tower Project (Blackpool Community Safety Partnership)

This project supports persistent offenders in Blackpool’s prisons and communities to steer them away from a life of crime. The Tower Project is a crime reduction initiative that has been operating in Blackpool since 2002, in a working partnership with:

• the police

• the probation service

• the Crown Prosecution Service

• NACRO.

Responding to the connection between drug misuse and re-offending, the programme offers persistent offenders immediate access to:

• drug treatment

• support with accommodation

• benefits

• employment

• lifestyle issues.

In comparison between 2001 and 2002, figures uncovered:

• 17.7% fewer crimes overall

• 44.8% fewer house burglarises

• 33% fewer vehicle thefts

• 20% fewer street robberies.

Contact: Detective Inspector Edward Thistlewaite 
01253 604245

Knowle West Learning Through Football Project (Avon & Somerset Constabulary)

This project uses football to engage disaffected young people in Bristol. With 35% of the local population under the age of 15, the project was created to address issues on the Knowle and Filwood estate of South Bristol in:

• high arrest rates

• school truancy

• drug problems.

To help combat these issues, evening sessions were organised where young people learned football skills from two Bristol City FC coaches. As part of the scheme, young people also attended the Bristol City Study Support centre every Friday afternoon where they were taught literacy, numeracy, and IT skills through the medium of football. The results to date are promising with:

• lower truancy rates for young people taking part

• reduction in police complements around young people

• 90% of the 120 young people having remained on the programme and not re-offended. 

Contact: DS Nick Papuca 
0117 945 5603

The Streets Ahead Project (Hastings and Rother Youth Development Service)

This project tackles crime against visiting foreign language students in Hastings. Set-up as a pilot project in the summer of 2000, the Streets Ahead project was designed to address tensions between visiting language students and local young people as well as the growing perception of the town as an unsafe and violent place to visit.

By employing youth workers from European countries such as Germany, Sweden and Finland, the project was able to create a team that had the language skills necessary to communicate with young people in their first language. Additionally, workshops were run in secondary schools and police identified ‘hot spots’, which specifically targeted young people who had either offended or displayed behaviour likely to compromise the safety of others.

Organisations involved in this project implementation included:

• Sussex Police

• Hastings Borough Council

• The Youth Service

• Local educational establishments.

In its first year, the project has seen area crime decrease considerably, falling from 170 reported incidents in
2001, to 70 in 2002.

Contact: Sue Grieg 
01424 439284

Tower Hamlets Summer University (THSU)

This project focuses on reducing high incidence of crime by young people during summer holidays in the London borough of Tower Hamlets. A voluntary programme, THSU works with a diverse range of young people, aged between 14
– 25, to provide a safe and non-judgmental learning atmosphere. Its diverse range of participating youth people include:

• the homeless

• young offenders

• refugees

• the unemployed.

Working with 2 youth advisory groups, it promotes independent learning, racial tolerance and good community relations. Its success is attributed to the youth lead approach on programme development, which includes the development of peer mentors. Approximately 10% of the
Borough’s young people go through the university’s programme. The results have been overwhelmingly
positive, with:

• an 8% reduction in youth crime

• a 17% reduction in juvenile nuisance

• a 25% reduction in drug offences.

Contact: Sarah Hodgkin 
020 7247 7900

The Clockwise Centre (Essex Trust for Rehabilitation and Assistance –
EXTRA)

A charity supports prisoners and helps to divert them from a life of crime in Essex. Established in 1994, EXTRA’s Clockwise centre is a day centre facility, which provides services for

• offenders

• ex-offenders

• those at risk from offending

• their families.

The focus is on addressing the underlying causes of crime such as:

• lack of education

• unemployment

• drug or alcohol misuse 

• poor housing or homelessness.

Over the past nine years, the centre has successfully worked with over 300 individuals from the age group
predominantly responsible for crime on one of the Essex’s highest crime
areas consisting of:

• males between 18 – 30 

• females between 23 – 30  

Through providing a wide range of services and activities, they have been able to address many of the underlying causes of crime. In 2001, Clockwise Centre received the Investors in People award,
and also the High Sheriff’s award for best volunteering organisation in 2003.

Contact: Sarah Tomlinson 
01255 423466.

Rewards

Four of the five winners will each receive a trophy along with their choice of £1,500 worth of Crime Concern training or £2,000 cash.

Overall winner, Essex’s Clockwise Centre, will receive an additional £1,500 worth of training or £1,000 cash and the opportunity to represent the UK in the European Crime Prevention Awards to be held later this year.