Christchurch Borough Homewatch

In 2007,as part of the drive to reduce the unacceptable level of the fear of crime in this community, I convened a meeting of what was a fragmented group of Neighbourhood Watch contributors, mainly from this ward. From that meeting and subsequent meetings with the Police came the direction of forming a Borough wide Homewatch organisation with the objective of getting communities actively involved in setting standards of behaviour for their communities and working in partnership with the police, the Council, Housing Associations and other partners. With the help of some notable contributors like Bernie Davies and especially Barry Sherwin the idea blossomed into reality and today we have over 2000 homes as signed up members and the list is growing. Fear of crime has fallen remarkably in the last couple of years and communities are beginning to see that working with the Police and other agencies has delivered real community benefits. Last year Christchurch won the 'watch of the year' award and yesterday hosted the meeting of the Dorset Association of Watches at the Council offices.I was privileged to be able to welcome the delegates from all parts of the County and I know they became aware very quickly that Christchurch was punching above it's weight in the field of community involvement to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour. Tonight at the East Dorset Bowls Club Christchurch Borough Homewatch (CBH) will host an evening for members and Street Co-coordinator's, this purely a social gathering but will be attended by senior Police and Council and has the objective of just saying thank you for all the contributions made by co-coordinators, making Christchurch a safer place to live and visit. Homewatch members are seeing for themselves just how important their role is in being the eyes and ears of the community and how valued this is to all agencies charged with the task of keeping crime and anti-social problems to the low levels being experienced at present. CBH is still growing in numbers and our presence is obvious all over the Borough, we still need more street cordinators and are recruiting new members on a daily basis.Why not come along to see what we do!