Cambridge Community Safety Partnership: Working together to keep Cambridge safe

The Cambridge Community Safety Partnership meets regularly throughout the year to help keep Cambridge safe.

It brings together the city and county councils, police, fire and probation services, transport police and health, as well as local business, voluntary and higher education organisations.

The partnership looks at what community safety issues people in Cambridge are experiencing, such as antisocial behaviour or specific types of crime, and decides what actions to take to prevent or deal with these issues together.

Each year, community safety priorities for Cambridge are reviewed, with actions for the year ahead set out in the Community Safety Plan.

Priority for 2023 to 2025

Our strategic assessment 2023/24 (available in the Insights section below) showed us that while Cambridge is a safe city, there has been an increase in reports of violence with injury. Most of these incidents are connected to the night-time economy in our city centre, with victims and perpetrators of this violence most likely to be aged 17 to 34. To address this the Community Safety Partnership has set our priority of:

Reducing violence in our city centre

We’ll achieve this by:

Developing educational campaigns to prevent violence, focussing on younger people.
Working together to increase safety in our city centre.

Over the life of the strategy, we will:

create educational resources on county lines
deliver an ambassador programme for young people to prevent sexual violence
have more police in the city centre in the right place at the right time
train businesses in the night time economy to identify predatory behaviours and prevent offences
have more taxi marshals to help people get home safely from a night out
have more CCTV in the market square and city centre green spaces
deliver targeted interventions to 18 to 25 year olds who receive short-sentences for violence offences

This builds on our 2022/23 priorities, which were:

Safeguarding young people against violence and exploitation

The partnership created the Cambs Against County Lines campaign in 2020 to raise awareness about drugs, violence, and gangs in Cambridge. We also supported schools to raise awareness of the dangers of county lines among pupils aged 11 to 18, in Year 7 to Year 13, creating a video to be shown in schools to support pupil workshops.

Listening to community needs and responding together to reduce harm

This included our work to address long-term community concerns about bicycle theft. The partnership established a task and finish group, which works with CamCycle to run the Save our Cycles campaign. We shared information to help people keep their bikes safe and ran multiple sessions where bike owners could have free bike-marking and cycle safety advice, which will continue in 2024. If a bike is registered, stolen, and recovered it is easier to reunite the bike to its owner.

Cycle security

Business as usual

The partnership regularly works together on issues such as bicycle theft; making the Cambridge night-time economy safer; delivering Cambridge Street Aid; raising awareness of domestic abuse and support available to survivors; and conducting domestic homicide reviews (see below).

The partnership’s current business as usual work focuses on:

The city centre – through the City Centre Working Group chaired by the Police: working with stakeholders such as businesses and universities to discuss issues such as night time economy and retail crime
Domestic Abuse, led by Cambridge City Council: raising awareness, co-ordinating training, and promoting the White Ribbon Campaign
Problem-solving – through the Problem-Solving Working Group chaired by Cambridge City Council: Multi-Agency Partners discuss cases including hot spots to develop action plans
Street Community, led by Cambridge City Council: discussing individual cases and developing action plans

Community Safety Plan

The latest Community Safety Plan came into effect in September 2023.

Previous plans are available upon request.

Community Safety Plan [PDF, 0.2MB]

Insights

We ensure we are responding to an accurate picture of the current issues facing Cambridge in respect of crime, disorder, antisocial behaviour, substance misuse and behaviour adversely affecting the environment.

Documents such as the strategic assessment, and other reports, offer valuable insights.

We will share reports published within the last two years below.

Annual review

We review the partnership’s work each year, to help outline actions for the year ahead.

Cambridge Community Safety Partnership annual review 2024 [PDF, 0.4MB]

Meetings

Most partnership meetings are open to the general public. If you would like to learn more about the partnership, or bring an issue to the meeting for discussion, please get in touch.

We publish the full agenda and associated papers in the week before each meeting, which has details on how to ask questions.

Next public meeting

Tuesday 25 February 2025, 10am at Conference Room 2, Parkside Place Community Fire Station, Cambridge CB1 1JF

Previous meetings

Please contact us for copies of previous meetings’ agendas and minutes.

Domestic Abuse Related Death Reviews

We carry out a Domestic Abuse Related Death Review when somebody dies as a result of abuse, violence or neglect by a relative, intimate partner or member of the same household. The review was previously called a Domestic Homicide Review.

We work with our partners to appoint an independent chairperson to carry out this review for us. It helps us to ensure that lessons are learnt when a person has died as a result of domestic abuse, either by homicide or suicide.

Family members, friends and colleagues of the victim are important to the review process, if they want to be. We also involve the perpetrator, if possible. Involving all these people gives us a more complete view of the life of the individual concerned.

Below are the domestic homicide reviews that the partnership has commissioned:

The government provides guidance and information for family, friends and colleagues who have been affected by domestic abuse related deaths. Action After Fatal Domestic Abuse also offer support to people after the homicide, suicide or unexplained death of their family member or friend, following domestic abuse.

If you or someone you know is currently experiencing domestic abuse, read our advice for people affected by domestic abuse to find free and confidential support.

Work the Community Safety team is involved in

To find out more about the work we are involved in, please view the following pages:

Community Safety Partnership agencies

The partnership is made up of a range of different agencies. There are statutory ‘responsible authorities’ and a number of equally important, non-statutory members. They are:

Cambridge City Council
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Integrated Care Partnership
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust
Cambridgeshire Constabulary
Cambridgeshire County Council
Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service
Probation Service – Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Probation Delivery Unit
Anglia Ruskin University
British Transport Police
Cambridge Business Against Crime
Cambridge Council for Voluntary Service
Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
University of Cambridge

A representative of the Office of the Cambridgeshire Police and Crime Commissioner also attends the partnership meetings.

Cambridge City Council