What is community safety?

The Home Office defines community safety as

An aspect of quality of life in which people, individually and collectively, are protected as far as possible form hazards or threats that result from the criminal or anti-social behaviour of others and are equipped or helped to cope with those they do experience.

Community safety is all about the issues that make people safe, or unsafe, in their communities. Achieving safer communities depends on everyone working together to find local solutions to local problems. Everyone has the right to feel and be safe, whether at home or not, and it is the shared responsibility of the community as well as the public, private and voluntary organisations to ensure that this is possible.

Lancaster District Community Safety Partnership (CSP) is a collective of public, voluntary, community and private organisations who come together to do all that they can to make the district's communities safer. The CSP provides a co-ordinated response to community safety issues, drawing together organisations and people that can make a difference.

To address the issues that really matter, it is important to understand not only what is happening and where, but what is causing the problems and the best way to tackle them. All the work of the CSP is informed by evidence of risk and need provided by our annual strategic assessment.

Every year, we prioritise a number of key issues that evidence tells us are most important to address in the district: domestic abuse, violent crime, community cohesion, anti-social behaviour, and road safety.

Community safety acknowledges that it is no one organisation's sole responsibility to deliver a reduction in crime and disorder and the fear of crime but something which needs to be tackled collectively and in partnership with others.

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Contact us

• Email: communitysafety@lancaster.gov.uk
• Telephone: 01524 582000