What we do

Community Safety

Community Safety is the Lambeth Council-based team that works with other agencies, including the police, probation, NHS and youth organisations to make Lambeth a safer place to live work and visit.  There have been major achievements in the last six years as crime has consistently fallen and Lambeth is now in the top four London boroughs for crime reduction. But there is still work to do. The team recently worked to develop the first Safer Lambeth Partnership Plan – which saw each of the partners sign-up to a shared plan for the next three years.

Community Safety is made up of professionals from different backgrounds  including police, probation, NHS and youth work.  The division, based in the heart of Brixton, is led by Ann Corbett, Assistant Director and is made up of several teams:

Anti-social behaviour team

This team’s role is to consider information received about unacceptable or anti-social behaviour and to take appropriate prevention or enforcement action where necessary, such as ASBOs, parental letters or good neighbour agreements.

Community safety partnership co-ordinators

This team works with local residents, businesses, councillors and the police to develop solutions to problems  ranging from from prostitution to violent crime across all 21 wards in Lambeth.  Along with their geographical remit, each of the staff leads on a particular theme such as prostitution, violent or business crime and key projects such as the development of the borough’s fear of crime strategy.

They work especially closely with Safer Neighbourhood Panels and have a good local knowledge of the area, which helps them develop solutions to local problems.  To find out who your local community safety partnership co-ordinator is call 020 7926 2733.

Community engagement

Lambeth’s Communities Engagement Co-ordinator manages a team that works with diverse communities to find ways to address and raise awareness of community safety issues such as hate crime, preventing violent extremism or drugs and alcohol misuse.

Partnership information unit

This unit of crime analysts works with police staff to collate and assess crime and related data, to allow informed decisions on where resources should be directed.

Lambeth drug and alcohol team (DAT)

The DAT is a partnership of all the organisations involved in reducing the harm caused by drugs and alcohol in Lambeth. They use an evidence-led approach to address all aspects of drug and alcohol use such as:

• Young people substance misuse – work specifically to target young people and both raise awareness of the dangers of drugs and alcohol and help those already involved to access support services
• Partnership commissioning of drug and alcohol treatment services with Lambeth PCT as the lead commissioners
• Drug Intervention Programme – managed by Keith Stewart, this programme targets and supports drug-related offenders, providing treatment from the point of arrest through to sentence and release into the community
• Service user involvement – Rosy Flexer (the service user co-ordinator) works with drug and alcohol service users giving them the opportunity to use their knowledge and experience of drug and alcohol use to shape and improve the service we provide
• Work with the police to reduce drug dealing in Lambeth
• Tackling alcohol – Andrew Martin and James Morris co-ordinate the borough’s alcohol strategy and approach to problems such as street drinking and encouraging licensed premises to take responsibility for their impact on the surrounding community.

Supporting young people involved in crime

Lambeth has a dedicated programme manager for the Young and Safe strategic action plan to significantly reduce the level of serious violent crime amongst the borough’s young people. 

The plan looks at tackling the reasons which can lead young people to get involved in crime and gangs. We also have a Phoenix programme which works with young people who have been involved in gun, gang or knife-related crime. The programme works with community organisations to help young people choose a different path by offering education, training and support.