Mobile computing boosts Council’s incident response rates
Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council has joined forces with Civica to help improve anti-social behaviour and envirocrime incident reporting and resource allocation using the company’s Authority Public Protection software.
Civica’s Authority Public Protection system (previously known as ‘Flare’) is enabling the Council’s 24 Neighbourhood Enforcement Officers to report anti-social behaviour and envirocrime incidents more accurately using handheld Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs).
As a result of using the new PDAs, Neighbourhood Enforcement Officers have increased the number of reported incidents from 1700 in 12 months last year to 3154 in 12 weeks this year.
The Neighbourhood Enforcement Officers’ PDAs are automatically updated in real-time using Authority Public Protection and featuring Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping capabilities to easily see where incidents are occurring. Stockton’s residents can also report incidents via the Web, which are fed back into the same database, avoiding duplication.
Using the central database, Stockton Council is also collating wider housing and environmental health data for combined analysis, extending the Home Office’s ‘One Day Count’ categories.
The One Day Count identified the types of anti social behaviour that concern the public the public the most. The Council can now record data in line with the One Day Count categories but has widened data capture beyond that captured by the Police to include enforcement, housing, some Trading Standards such as underage alcohol sales, Care For Your Area and environmental health noise reporting, giving it a more complete picture of the true amount of anti-social behaviour and envirocrime.
Andrea Dell’Aquila, Stockton Council’s Authority System Manager, said, “As a Beacon Council for Community Safety Partnership work, it is imperative that we have the most accurate and up-to-date information available so that we can continue to provide a high level of service that our citizens have come to expect and work effectively with other public organisations.
“Authority Public Protection offers Stockton-on-Tees a highly sophisticated, yet easy-to-use, system for data capture and analysis of anti-social behaviour and envirocrime, giving us the ability to deploy resources more efficiently.”
Full press release can be downloaded here...