Grant funding made available to new Cotswold safety partnership

• The Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), has awarded £50,000 of grant funding to improve areas of the Cotswolds where women feel unsafe
• The funding has been awarded from the Home Office Safer Streets fund, from which Gloucestershire has received over £2m
• A consultation period will run until 17^th March to ask the public on areas they feel could benefit from funding to feel safer

Gloucestershire’s PCC, Chris Nelson, is calling on the people of the Cotswolds to share the areas they feel are unsafe for women, after £50,000 of grant funding has been made available to the Safer Streets Cotswold project.

An online consultation has been launched, asking members of the public to share areas they feel are unpleasant or unsafe and therefore may receive anti-social behaviour. The consultation will run until 17^th March and can be accessed through the following link https://saferstreetscotswold.commonplace.is/.

Once the consultation has closed, Cotswold Community Safety Partnership will shortlist and select the winning proposals, before Cotswold District Council plans and delivers them. Delivery is expected to begin in September 2023.

The grant has been awarded directly from the Safer Streets Fund, a Home Office initiative which directs funding towards projects aiming to tackle anti-social behaviour, neighbourhood crime and Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG). In Gloucestershire, over £2m of funding has been secured by the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC).

PCC, Chris Nelson, said “Local knowledge has an essential part to play as it will enable the police and our partners to introduce measures that will do most to make our streets safer.”

“The community safety partnership has an important role to play in this, and I hope as many people as possible take part in the consultation. I would also urge people to use the Flare App, which enables anyone to report an area where they feel threatened or vulnerable anonymously and in confidence.”

Councillor Lisa Spivey, Cotswold District Council Cabinet Member for Corporate Services, said, “People have the right to be safe and feel safe in the areas where they live. We know that areas that aren’t looked after, where there is poor lighting and little or no CCTV can be a magnet for anti-social behaviour which can escalate into crime. We need to know where these places are in our district so that we can get to work in making them look more welcoming and feel safer.”

“It’s vitally important that as many people as possible respond to the consultation, after all, it’s our residents who know their areas best and know where work needs to be done.”

Safer Streets Cotswold is a local partnership between the OPCC, Cotswold Community Safety Partnership and Cotswold District Council.