Crime Quango joins secrecy club

September 3, 1999

[CDRP]

Meetings of the recently formed local Crime Reduction quango are being held in secret, with members of the public excluded from observing.

Also excluded are members of the press, with the exception of the Telegraph & Argus, which has been selected to act as the sole public outlet of information from the Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership.

The main focus of the new crime quango will be securing a massive £1.3 million extension of the City Centre CCTV spy camera network, which will set up 22 high tech spy cameras around the centre, linked to a new control room under City Hall. Details of the bid for government cash remain secret, but it is believed that a direct video link will be included to the police control room; that CCTV systems in Keighley, Bingley and Shipley will be linked directly to the system; and that private companies in the City will be able to add their own cameras to the system.

The huge cost of running and maintaining the system will fall on local ratepayers.

It comes at a time when the country's leading crime experts have called for a moratorium on such schemes as evidence mounts that they are ineffective.

Calls for a proper evaluation of existing systems by Bradford TUC and the 1 in 12 Club have been ignored.

The Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership (CDRP) was set up in response to government legislation last year. It is made up locally of representatives from numerous local organisations, including most of the other secret quangos which play such a huge role in running the city. The leading bodies are the police and Bradford Council.

The council have injected £200,000 to start up the Partnership. It's first role was to produce a local Crime and Disorder Audit earlier this year.

Sharmila Gandhi, Community Safety Officer for Bradford Council said that meetings of the CDRP were not open to the public and the Home Office determined who was invited to be members:

"This is not a public meeting. This is more a business meeting and members of the public or the press cannot simply turn up and attend. This is not because the Partnership have anything to hide but they have a statutory duty to carry out certain business."

In fact the Home Office guidance gives no restrictions on who may be invited to join, nor does it suggest meetings be conducted in secret. In fact it positively encourages openness as necessary if the scheme is to succeed:

"It is clearly right that local people should be invited to participate actively in the process of tackling local problems, not just passively consulted about them... Establishing some sort of inner circle or 'Responsible Authorities Group' from which other partners are excluded is likely to undermine this concept fatally..." "Accountability" is given as one of the "crucial elements of effective management."

There is no clear structure or rules for the quango, so it's not clear who is responsible for such decisions. The chair of the CDRP is council leader Ian Greenwood. He told KDIS that he would raise the issue at the next meeting.

Meanwhile, CDRP public and press relations is governed by a "joint media protocol" and has been given exclusively to the T&A, which have run a long campaign in support of CCTV, and have even put money into schemes in Airedale. T&A editor Perry Austin-Clarke is a CDRP member, and T&A crime reporter Joanne Earp has been designated as a member of the "Strategy Implementation Team". Earp is perhaps best known for her on-the-scene coverage of a "riot" in Manningham that never actually happened.

Perry Austin-Clarke told KDIS:

"I am sure that you are fully aware that we believe in - and actively campaign for - open government and a free press.

"In the case of the Crime & Disorder Reduction Partnership we were invited to participate in an advisory capacity to offer guidance on how certain public consultation exercises could be carried out and on how best to use the media to pursue the partnership's common social goal of reducing crime and the fear of crime.

"We attended in a representative rather than reporting capacity on the understanding that were we to acquire information we felt to be in the public interest we would make representations and seek agreement to publish it - which we did on several occasions. At no stage were we prevented from publishing information we requested to use.

"We were chosen to represent the media because of our position as the most important, respected and widely-read organ of communication in the district - and because we could be trusted to challenge unscrupulous activity if necessary.

"As a result, we were able to present a better-informed view of the whole process than we would have had we refused the invitation and been excluded along with all other media.

"Better to have a trustworthy public watchdog on the inside keeping an eye on things than to have no access at all to a behind-closed-doors process."

The growing number of secret quangos which control large sections of public life and public expenditure has been condemned by opposition councillors. A Lib-Dem spokesman told KDIS:

"We're of the opinion that where public money is spent, then the body spending that money must be held accountable to the public - it must be part of the democratic process, it must be open about its decision-making processes, and the public should be allowed access to the information that informs those decisions. Members of the public should be allowed access in the same way as they are allowed access under legislation to council meetings and council committees."

Meanwhile the Council have put forward its Crime & Disorder Reduction Partnership for a "beacon status" award from the government.

Update: September 8, 1999

Government minister urges public involvement in crime strategy

Home Office minister Charles Clarke MP today told an invited audience that reducing crime could only succeed through an effective public partnership. He was speaking after a private meeting with council leader Ian Greenwood and selected members of the districts Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership. Mr Clarke impressed his audience with his open and intelligent response to questions.

The meeting also saw short presentations from Bradford and Keighley Victim Support groups, and from Ian Hunt of Marks and Spencers.

Ian Hunt explained how the M&S shop in Bradford had 16 CCTV cameras, monitored full time by trained operators. He said he was proud that M&S was one of the sponsors behind the new bid to extend the City's on-street spy-camera network, which would link the CCTV networks of Bradford, Bingley Keighley and Shipley.

"We will be able to track someone across 4 towns" he said excitedly, "We are going to track someone who steals from Bradford and retails in Keighley"

"Working in partnership is the only way we can achieve this" he said.

M&S is a leading player in the Town Centre Management movement.

Hunt was backed by Mark Cartwright of the Chamber of Commerce, who demanded more CCTV cameras in central locations and out-of-town commercial centres. It was clear where the demand for publicly funded CCTV expansion came from.

Meanwhile local Tory leader councillor Margaret Eaton attacked the "cloak of secrecy" surrounding the CDRP, as revealed exclusively by KDIS Online.

"Despite Home Office guidelines encouraging public involvement, the publicly-funded Bradford partnership appears determined to continue behind a cloak of secrecy" she said.

Update 2: April 5, 2000

Crime Quango opens doors to the public

The first meeting of the Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership which was open to public observers took place yesterday. See article.