Conservative Councillors have visited Eltham High Street to talk to traders about fears of violence spreading from other parts of London, and thanked the police for their efforts to protect the community.

On Wednesday evening I attended the quarterly Safer Neighbourhood Team (SNT) meeting where all the local chairs of neighbourhood watch teams along with the local ward police and community support officers along with Councillors get together to discuss community safety over the last 3 months.

The Blackheath Fireworks back in November 2010 were discussed which appeared to be better organised from a police point of view now that the firing location had been moved from last year’s location.

At this evening’s Eltham North Safer Neighbourhood Panel meeting, attended by local Councillor Spencer Drury, it was revealed that burglaries had risen sharply over the summer, peaking at ten in July, which was the highest this year. One panel member from the Progress Estate stated that there had been two burglaries in one week on Lovelace Green.

Residents of Blackheath Westcombe can meet with their local Police Safer Neighbourhood Team (SNT) at a series of local street briefings which are taking place in July 2010. Members of the SNT will be available at the following times:

Conservatives welcomed news that two extra police officers have been assigned to Eltham High Street, which should allow officers from the Eltham North Safer Neighbourhood Team to spend more time dealing with issues in that ward.
 
A key pledge in the Conservative Manifesto for Council elections was to put in place police teams in Eltham and Greenwich Town Centres and following a request by Chairman of the Safer Neighbourhood Panel, Mr Terry Powley, confirmation was given by the police that they would be allocating extra officers to the High Street.

Greenwich Conservatives have outlined how they would put more Police on the beat in Greenwich.
Conservatives would fund extra Safer Neighbourhood Teams to be based initially in the three main town centres in Eltham, Greenwich and Woolwich. We believe that each of these town centres has its own specific challenges which require attention from a dedicated police team and this would allow residential areas to get the attention they deserve.

Woolwich suffers from high levels of violent crime and an existing Labour Councillor has described their Woolwich ward as the ‘murder capital of Greenwich’. However, not only have the Labour run Council failed to improve our safety but are planning to take even more police off the streets.

Boris Johnson’s policing policy meant that this year a new policing team has patrolled around Woolwich Arsenal DLR station. The 9-strong police team is funded entirely by Boris-led organisations and is part of the Mayor’s commitment to increasing the policing of transport hubs all over the capital.

This year Greenwich Conservatives proposed to increase the number of police on our streets. We proposed an alternative budget to create one extra police team immediately and one later in the year. Labour put party politics first and voted against the plan.
 

Alistair Craig, Conservative Parliamentary Spokesman for Greenwich & Woolwich, today pointed to newly published government figures showing the number of special police constables employed by the Met has fallen by 57% since 1997.  Special constables are voluntary uniformed police officers and assist regular police officers in frontline policing duties, particularly in patrolling town centres.