The city centre PACT meetings use a lot of police resources, the last meeting had four officers in attendance. This at a time when the police are saying they are significantly under strength.
Given this, we think it is important to pose the question. Does it deliver what residents want and need?
The turn out at PACT meetings is low and mostly the same group of people.
PACT tends to debate, often at length, two types of issue:
- Very specific local concerns which probably would be better reported by using other processes such as 101.
- Very large complex issues such as begging and street drink or the night time economy. These issues are rarely soluble by police action alone but other agencies rarely attend. There is almost never time to discuss them in any detail and the meeting is rarely given enough information to make an informed judgement about priorities.
The second type of issue is often being discussed in more detail in other forums and requires a much more deliberative discussion to arrive at any meaningful conclusions.
We think the time has come to scrap PACT and look at creating better reporting systems and more multi-agency and more deliberative forums.