Arleston Neighbourhood Watch - The future of our scheme
Our officers work closely with local authorities, community leaders and residents to decide their policing priorities for the area. This helps them to find useful, long-term solutions to local problems, while maintaining their wider focus on reducing crime in Telford & other areas in our county.
In August of last year, we were introduced to our local councillor, Angela McClements. We were advised by our local officers to get in touch with Angela to discuss environmental issues that had been raised by members of our community. Since then, Angela has helped us with a number of issues. Angela has taken the time to listen, acknowledge and do all that she can to help resolve issues raised.
Angela also works alongside our local safer neighbourhood team. On a monthly basis, Angela will meet local officers for a ward walk around Arleston to discuss any issues that need raising on behalf of our community. We cannot thank Angela enough for all that she has done for our scheme since we launched in August last year. It has been a pleasure to work alongside Angela & we look forward to working with her in the near future.
We also work with the Neighbourhood Watch, the charity. We have attended workshops to gain knowledge and experience on how to run this scheme. We also work with other neighbourhood watch groups around the country too.
Spreading the word
It is important to us as a scheme, that we try to reach as many members of our community as possible. So far, we have appeared in the Shropshire Star & also appeared in an article for Telford Live.
Our Facebook Page in the last month has reached approximately 23k people which is fantastic. These people have read content from our page, including posts that have been shared by people who follow us. We believe that it is important to share content with our followers on crime prevention and what has been happening in our area. Information that we share may help to prevent crime and may lead to more information being reported about a crime or suspicious activity that has taken place.
We are pleased to confirm that the two posts with the highest number of people reached were about "Operation Sceptre". Operation Sceptre was a nationwide campaign to get knives off of our streets. We hope that in reaching over 20k people with these two posts, that it encouraged people to hand in their dangerous knives. Special thanks to Telford Cops for sharing information with the public about this operation across social media to raise more awareness.
We are really impressed with how many people we have reached during this month alone. We will continue to share information that may be useful across our Facebook Page and other social media channels to raise more awareness of our scheme and tips on how to prevent crime and keep our community safe.
We also need your help too! If you speak to your next door neighbours, please tell them about our scheme. If you have had any interactions with us, tell them about your experience.
Residents of Arleston are more than welcome to join our official scheme. Joining us is easy.
1. Register your details with neighbourhood watch via the link below
https://www.ourwatch.org.uk/join
2. Once you have registered your details, you will then be able to join our scheme. Please visit the link below
https://www.ourwatch.org.uk/scheme/52975/arleston
Our plans to advertise our scheme
We have always wanted to reach our wider community. We have recently decided to advertise our scheme locally with some posters & business cards.
We wanted our posters to have a professional look, so we decided to approach Yasmine Lindsay, who is a local graphic designer to design a poster for us. With the help from local residents who donated funds to our fundraising campaign, we have been able to pay for Yasmine for her work.
Our posters will be displayed around Arleston, in the hope that more residents will join us. Yasmine has also designed a business card for us too. Once we have enough money raised from fundraising for these to be printed, we will give some to local officers, Angela McClements and in local shops. We will also be looking at other ways in which we can advertise our scheme in the future.
If you would like to help us raise money to advertise our scheme, please visit the link advertised across our Facebook Page and group. Donations of any amount would be much appreciated.
Current & Forthcoming campaigns
This week sees the neighbourhood watch campaign "Protect Your Pooch"
During the course of this week, we will be sharing useful tips on how to keep your dog(s) safe
Please keep an eye out across our social media accounts for a daily tip about how you can keep your furry friends safe.
We will also be raising more awareness about drug dealing and drug taking due to concerns about instances of this type of crime taking place within our community.
If you would would like us to provide more information about a crime that you are worried about, please send us a message via our Facebook page. We are more than happy to consider sharing information on a crime/topic that you may have concerns about.
Neighbourhood Watch Week
We are looking forward to celebrating our first "Neighbourhood Watch Week".
If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it is that neighbourliness and community spirit is just as important as ever.
Neighbourhood Watch Week 2021 (5th-11th June) is an opportunity for us to build on the existing and new neighbourly relationships formed throughout the pandemic. It is a time for us to build on the connections we have made before and during lockdown. Let’s stay connected!
On Saturday 5th June 2021, the CEO of Neighbourhood Watch will be launching a new community podcast. We will share information about this new feature with you all soon.
Also on Saturday 5th June 2021, why not take part in our litter pick?
We are hoping that members of our community of all ages, will join some of our "Street Champions" to tidy our streets within our community. Litter picking is easy and fun and you can feel proud in knowing that you have done something positive for your local community.
We hope that with the visibility of people out picking up litter off our streets, it may encourage more residents to dispose of their rubbish correctly. They may even consider taking part in litter picking themselves!
We want to see how many bags of rubbish can be collected! So make sure you report back to us with the number of bags that you have collected.
If you are not available on Saturday 5th June 2021, don't despair as we would like to invite residents to litter pick on Sunday 6th June 2021 too!
For more information or if you would like to take part, please register your interest on our Facebook page by acknowledging the event that we have created. Alternatively, please send us a message.
We will be attending a crime prevention webinar during the course of the week. We will share any relevant information with our scheme members and our social media followers.
We will also provide information about setting up a Calling Tree to enable us to support our neighbours and wider community who are not connected on social media. It's a lovely way to stay connected, especially with those who are not online.
We will also be asking you to nominate someone within the community who has demonstrated they are the best neighbour 2020-21.
You may even want to share a story about your friendship with your neighbours on our social media accounts. We would love to hear your stories & see any photos that you may have.
If you have any other suggestions on what activities we can do during "Neighbourhood Watch Week", please let us know!
Anonymity
In one of our recent surveys, it was noted that some residents were worried about reporting suspicious activities or crime due to being asked for their contact details.
We took your concerns to our local police and they very kindly put a letter together to reassure residents that they do not have to provide their personal information. We hope this letter reassures our fellow neighbours that there will be no issues in reporting crime anonymously.
We are pleased to share a copy of the letter below
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