Violent crimes in Rother on the up

A report to Rother District Council’s (RDC) overview and scrutiny committee claims there were 3,995 crimes in the area last year.

There were 1,509 cases of violent crime in the district, up by 27.7 per cent.

The number of domestic abuse cases also increased, by 7.3 per cent, to 484 but this was partly due to campaign to encourage victims reporting incidents.

Anti-social behaviour was the biggest drop, 20.7 per cent, to 337 incidents, there was a 10.7 per cent decrease in burglaries, 10 per cent fewer drug possession crimes and 0.9 per cent fewer criminal damage cases.

The executive director of business operations Anthony Leonard said in his report the figures are affected by changes to the way Sussex Police record crime.

“They [Sussex Police] have explained that this is because the Home Office accounting processes record violent crime in a different way that figures have increased e.g. three people involved in a fight is counted as three crimes, rather than one crime previously,” he said.

Rother Community Safety Partnership’s, or Safer Rother Partnership’s (SRP), annual performance report covers its work with many authorities to reduce crime.

The report allows the committee to make recommendations to the SRP’s responsible authorities which are: RDC, Sussex Police, East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service, East Sussex County Council, the Probation Service and Hastings and Rother Clinical Commissioning Group.

Some examples of its work includes the White Ribbon campaign against domestic abuse, intervening with homeless people, implementing CCTV, road safety initiatives and more.

The SRP’s priorities for this year are: anti-social behaviour, road safety, re-offenders, historical and emerging crimes as well as violet crime.

The office of the Sussex police and crime commissioner has suggested the Hastings and Rother partnerships should merge to follow Sussex Police’s combined district.

This would create a more ‘streamlined’ approach to reducing crime and an additional £52,000 would be available for the merged partnership.

The report will be discussed by the overview and scrutiny committee at the town hall on Monday, March 14.

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