Hi all, hope this blog finds you well and looking forward to the festive period. The last week in Newton Aycliffe has been a hectic one, but lots of positive activity has taken place. We are working very hard to improve confidence, in the hope that you trust us to deal with community issues effectively and robustly.
As it stands, we have seen a 14% reduction (YTD) in reported Anti-Social Behaviour. We are very aware that a lot of incidents don’t go reported and we can only encourage you to report such activity to us so we can improve the quality of life for everyone. However, we have made some huge inroads into those causing the community problems across the town. Working together with partners (and we’d like to thank County Councillors, DCC ASB Team, and Livin in particular for their support) we have targeted those individuals causing the most amount of harm in the area. A number of Acceptable Behaviour Contracts, Community Protection Notices and arrests have been made in relation to ASB related offences. These contracts and notices are crucial in the escalation process to gain support from courts to issue injunctions and orders to those who wont work with us to reduce their offending. Ultimately, we have to prove to a court that we have tried everything with youths, in particular, to educate and divert them away from further offending. On Friday last week, we were in court with two youths who have committed a number of offences across the Western area.
A number of suspects have been arrested in relation to some burglaries that we had in late October. This involved a team of criminals operating across the North of England entering peoples houses to take their car keys and then their vehicles. These suspects have all been interviewed, one sent back to prison, and enquiries are ongoing to get these suspects to court.
There was some great work by our Response and Safeguarding colleagues this week in the arrest of Dwayne Grimes for domestic assault. He was remanded to court on Tuesday 23rd November where he received a suspended prison sentence and an injunction which prevents him from entering Kirkstone Place, Newton Aycliffe.
On Tuesday this week, some of the team were in Sugar Hill Primary School delivering Carousel type training to year 5 and 6 students around ASB, Bullying, Online Safety, and Crime and Consequences. These sessions are crucial in getting important messages out to young children on how to stay safe and to prevent them from getting into trouble themselves. The kids were amazing, engaged really well and were rewarded with certificates and a visit from Jet and Ben.
We are really looking forward to our Christmas Event in Newton Aycliffe Town Centre on both Saturday 27th November and 11th December (shop opposite Savers) from 10am to 4pm. This is a great event where we get to engage with the community and raise money for local charities. Please bring your kids along to this free event where they get to meet Santa and receive a small gift.
We will also be attending the Ayclliffe Village Resident Meeting this Friday (26th Nov) at 6.30pm, and the Neville Community Coffee Morning between 10am to 12pm on Friday 3rd December as part of our PACT commitment, it would be lovely to see you there.
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Take care of yourselves, and please continue to support us in helping you.