Rural Crime
Partnerships and Initiatives to Prevent and Reduce Rural Crime
For efforts at crime reduction and prevention to be effective, the relevant agencies will need to work in partnership and in consultation with their local communities to ensure a comprehensive, consistent and properly co-ordinated approach.
Legal provisions and the role of local authorities
The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 underpins such partnership work. It provides for the establishment by local authorities and the police of crime reduction partnerships in all local authority areas, the conduct by them of detailed, consultative, audits of local problems, and the drawing up of strategies to tackle the issues emerging.
This enables specific rural concerns to be identified and addressed with the involvement of all the interested parties, including the rural community and rural voluntary organisations. The concerns might include such considerations as the existence of regularly unoccupied second homes and the integration of their owners into the local community.
Local authorities will also need to bear in mind that, under section 17 of the Act, they are required to exercise all their functions with regard to the likely effect on crime and disorder.
Apart from the Crime and Disorder Act, at the basic local level, the Local Government and Rating Act 1997 empowers parish councils to raise money locally specifically to support local crime prevention activities.
Last update: 09/09/03