Local Community Safety Partnership

The Government has approved a new whole of system approach to community safety, introduced by the Department of Justice. It has developed the new community safety policy based on a key principle identified in the 2018 report by the Commission on the Future of Policing; that policing is not the responsibility of the police alone and involves other agencies of Government such as health and social services.

The concept of community safety is about people being safe and feeling safe in their own community to be delivered through Local Community Safety Partnerships and supported through a national governance structure. This will build on the work undertaken through Joint Policing Committees and supplement it by ensuring that all other relevant stakeholders necessary to constitute a more holistic forum for discussion and decisions on community priorities are present. Consequently, the Partnerships will have a wider membership than the JPCs and will include residents, local councillors, community representatives, business and education representatives along with a range of public services including the HSE, Tusla, An Garda Síochána and the local authority.

The partnership approach is built on two premises:

1. That every community is different and has different problems and issues.
2. That responding to those problems and issues requires a range of inputs from across Government, local services, voluntary sector and the community itself.

The response to the issues identified above requires the following elements:

• Community engagement in identifying what the needs of the community are.
• Commitment and buy-in from State, local and voluntary service providers to work together to address those needs.

The local Community Safety Partnerships will seek to foster sustained community involvement in identifying needs and co-designing solutions, and sustained commitment from services in working together to address those needs. Local Community Safety Partnerships align with similar approaches in related policy areas such as the Sláintecare Healthy Communities initiative and the existing Local Community Development Committees.