Your Say on Community Safety Survey 2024

The Safer Warwickshire Partnership Board commissioned the Your Say on Community Safety survey to better understand current community safety issues and any concerns that residents, and those who work or study in Warwickshire, may have. The findings from the survey will enable the Board to develop its community safety services, with the aim of increasing how safe residents feel and promoting action that can be taken to help increase feelings of safety. They will also be used to inform the setting of new Community Safety Partnership priorities in early 2025.

The Your Say on Community Safety survey was developed in early 2024 and was live on the Ask Warwickshire website from 8^th July – 4^th August 2024. The survey was open to all residents of Warwickshire, plus those who work or study in the county.

A total of 746 responses were received, 731 from Warwickshire residents and 15 from those working/studying but not living in the county.

Key findings of note include:

• When asked how they felt about crime locally and nationally, the majority of respondents said they believed that it had increased over the previous 12 months.
• Residents who reported feeling unsafe were most likely to have done so in open spaces or car parks.
• A large proportion of respondents had taken measures to protect their home and/or their security online.
• Respondents were most concerned about having something stolen from their person or home.
• Not all respondents who stated they’d been a victim of crime or anti-social behaviour in the past 12 months reported this to the Police or another agency.
• The most common theme to emerge from the free text comments was a request for increased Police visibility, either in the town centres or in the local community where respondents lived.

The survey findings will be used to inform the setting of new Community Safety Partnership priorities in early 2025.

In addition, a report on the survey responses was presented to the Safer Warwickshire Partnership Board on 5th December 2024.

The Board report included information about work planned to increase the visibility of Police in local communities, including embedding a hotspot policing approach and targeted engagement in priority locations.

The Board also agreed to respond to the concerns raised in the survey by providing information on community safety activity taking place across Warwickshire and informing residents about different ways in which crime can be reported. These messages will be shared across the county in different ways, including via social media and online newsletters, as these were the most popular forms of communication identified by survey respondents.

The Board agreed to repeat the survey on a biennial basis, offering residents further opportunities to provide their views on community safety in Warwickshire. The 2024 results did not provide the views of a representative sample of the population, and options for extending the reach of messaging about the survey to a wider range of demographic groups will be explored prior to it being undertaken again in 2026.