PCC provides £500K funding boost to take on anti-social behaviour

The Police and Crime Commissioner, Donna Jones, has announced further support for community initiatives in her continuing campaign to drive down anti-social behaviour (ASB).

The PCC’s ASB Fund supports local communities who are striving to make their neighbourhoods safer places to live, work and visit. The Fund has an annual £200K pot and now a further half a million pounds is being injected into it to further boost the battle to tackle ASB. It’s open to bids from local authorities, police, Community Safety Partnerships and community groups to provide partnership solutions to recurring anti-social behaviour issues.

PCC Donna Jones said: “For too long, communities across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight have been blighted by anti-social behaviour. Residents, businesses and neighbourhoods continually tell me that ASB makes them feel unsafe.

“As Police Commissioner, tackling this scourge is always on my radar. I want to reassure everyone that I’m doing everything in my power to reverse this damaging and destructive behaviour.

“As a collective, we can do more to bring neighbourhoods out from under the shadow of ASB. I am continually listening to communities across the two counties and I’ve enabled this further funding to be available for interventions and projects that make a real difference.”

The ASB Fund was launched by the PCC in July 2021. Since then anti-social behaviour has been on the decline in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. From April 2020 to March 2021, there were 37,325 recorded incidents. That figure went down to 29,201 for April 2021 to March 2022. The following year, April 2022 to March 2023, a total of 22,418 ASB incidents were recorded.

Projects funded by the Commissioner’s ASB Fund this year include electric bikes for Neighbourhood Policing Teams, summer youth outreach and engagement in the Hotwalls area of Portsmouth and a pilot youth programme to engage with young people in Rushmoor. Workshops, lessons and a safeguarding fair to tackle youth knife crime in Southampton and a youth outreach trial for Ryde on the Isle of Wight have also received funding.

PCC Donna Jones said: “My ASB Fund is having a clear and positive impact. This partnership approach and responsiveness to community need must be continued because together we can make safer and stronger communities.”

Local authorities, MPs and Community Safety Partnerships have been contacted informing them of the £500K cash injection. The bid application form and application guidance is available by emailing ASBFund@hampshire.police.uk.