Multi-Agency approach: Background

At the heart of the Crime and Disorder Act is the requirement that agencies work in partnership. Partnership working is not new and the concept has been developed over a number of years. Key stages in its development are:

• Home Office Circular 8/1984 laid down the principle that crime prevention should be a significant and integral goal of local and national public policy. It stressed the need for a co-ordinated approach and joint strategies involving partnership.

• The Morgan Report (Safer Communities: the Local Delivery of Crime Prevention through the Partnership Approach" Home Office Standing Conference on Crime Prevention. August 1991) introduced the concept of ‘community safety’ and emphasised that crime reduction should be ‘holistic’ covering both situational and social approaches. It noted that crime reduction was a peripheral issue for major agencies and a core activity of none of them (Home Office 1991: 3) and advocated the development of multi-agency crime prevention co-ordinated by local authorities. The Morgan Report identified six elements crucial to multi-agency crime reduction work: structure, leadership, information, identity, durability and resources.

• Safer Cities was launched in March 1988 by the Home Office as its contribution to the Action for Cities Programme. A local steering committee with representatives from local government, police, probation, voluntary bodies and commerce was established in each project area. The steering committee's terms of reference were:

  • to act as a focus for a local multi-agency crime prevention partnership;

  • to set priorities for the project and oversee the implementation of community safety measures;

  • to facilitate contact and co-operation between local agencies and interests.

The general approach to the development of crime management strategies within Safer Cities drew upon the problem solving (or problem-oriented) (Sutton 1996). Project co-ordinators were tasked with undertaking a crime audit and develop a three-year strategy and annual action plans. In 1992, a second phase of Safer Cities was announced. Forty new schemes were established, each running for three years.

• Crime and Disorder Act 1998: the consultation document Getting to Grips with Crime: A New Framework for Local Action published by Home Office in September 1997 http://www.crimereduction.gov.uk/ggwc.htm sets out the Government’s intention to provide a new legislative framework to maximise the contribution of all the key partners to crime prevention and community safety and one which gave local people an opportunity to contribute to the process. The document acknowledged the importance of the Morgan Report and its assertion of the need for broadly based multi-agency approaches to crime prevention, and the need to involve voluntary and business sectors as partners. It noted that one of the biggest barriers to progress was seen as the lack of a statutory role for local authorities.

Crime prevention strategies should be targeted on a manageable geographic and demographic area to provide a recognisable community upon whose needs they could focus.

The document made it clear that there were no cost implications for this proposed legislation:

“It costs nothing to make crime one of the factors which is routinely considered when, say, new policies for the delivery of social services are planned, or new housing estates are built . . .”

“The proposals set out in this paper are not about requiring local government to deliver a major new service, or to take on substantial new burdens. Their aim is to give the vital work of preventing and reducing crime a new focus across a very wide range of local services, including . . . those provided by local authorities. It is a matter of putting crime and disorder considerations at the heart of decision making, where they have always belonged.”