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Wednesday 04 February 2009 16:56

Dear One and All

PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING IMPORTANT CHANGES THAT COULD AFFECT YOU AND YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD!

1 - The Home Office in conjunction with the Police Authority, have announced expansion the current "WATCH" groups. Already we have Neighbourhood Watch and Countryside Watch and recently SPEEDWATCH - plus the Safer Neighbourhoods initiative.

2 - Announced at Neighbourhood Watch Annual Conference on Saturday in Huntingdon, by Chief Constable Julie Spence, Neighbourhood Watch is now combined with Home Watch, so the title will now read: Neighbourhood and Home Watch. What this means about Safer Neighbourhoods we don't as yet know. Anyway this seems logical to me and ties up with SPEEDWATCH, which was piloted at Ramsey police station last week. Countryside Watch is part of the Rural Crimes Unit and has proven invaluable in preventing much crime from actually happening because of the vigilence of their members.

The upgraded website is well worth visiting and I encourage everyone to sign themselves up! Being safe at home and in the community is very much a shared responsibility! The website link is:

http://www.mynhw.co.uk/index.php

It is an interesting well-thought site. Signing on is easy and you will get a newsletter. From a personal point, I believe it is every ones responsibility to be aware of their own safety and simple measures than can be taken. Likewise the police are really appreciative to be advised of any odd goings on - or just activities that are 'out of character' or just plain suspicious! Simply call: 0845 456 456 4 if you are just suspicious - keeping 999 for real emergencies.

3 - SPEEDWATCH started in this area, Ramsey (all of them), Bury and Upwood last Friday. Run entirely by volunteers under police guidence the first afternoon resulted in some useful data - and a number of speeding motorists will be getting cautionary letters. The sting in those letters is that should the driver be caught speeding again during the next 12 months, additional penalties will be imposed.

In all SPEEDWATCH operations, the police are involved as they authorise and issue an "incident number" in advance for each site and every event.

The local volunteer coordinator of the small group (including me) is Keith Sisman and we are eager to recruit more volunteers. For those who may not know, Keith is a RoSPA advanced driving instructor and CADAR - Cambridgeshire Advanced Drivers and Riders, is the local organisation, whose volunteers will provide free advanced driving tuition to any driver or rider (full UK licence holders) - but especially young men under 25 who are involved in more fatal accidents than any other group! The aim being to improve driving skills and reduce accidents. All details can be found at:

www.cadar.org.uk - and contact with Keith direct is at: email: Keith@sisman.net

4 - I have attached a composite of the presentation slides from Saturday's conference. I draw your attention to CC Julie Spence's presentation, for I believe you find some of the information most encouraging! One slide puts the public's perception of 'reliable reporting' in balance with other information sources. Especially satisfying because the point is again made about how inportant it is for ordinary people to report in suspicious activities, so the police can deal and prevent more crime happening.

Please feed any information back to me if you would rather do that than call the police yourselves. All we need to know is what, where and when - plus index numbers of any vehicles or simple descriptions if possible. Over two years, we (locally) have fed some very good intelligence resulting several successful drug raids!
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Bury Parish Council


Council Meeting first Wednesday in the month 19:30 hrs Bury village hall