Proactively Signing Up Coordinators to Neighbourhood Watch's Database
Describe your best practice
Greenwich Neighbourhood Watch proactively signs up existing and all new coordinators and schemes up to the Neighbourhood Watch's national database. We do this as they collect new signage for their scheme, we get them to complete a form which states that they will be added to the national scheme. This then saves time and allows us all to have the same database of members.
What did you do and why?
We discovered that many coordinators get confused when becoming a coordinator, that they assume the police have added them to the Neighbourhood Watch database. In fact this could not be further from the truth – 80% of our schemes were not registered. So we have brought new signage for the borough and when distributing the signage, we get them to sign-up to the NW database as well. We have had 100% positive response rate.
Duration of the project
Ongoing
What worked well?
It has been really well received, with many schemes not knowing that they should sign up. We send a email to the coordinator with their sign in details and how to sign in and administer their schemes. This has been very successful.
We also checked our own database to see if schemes have been registered and inform both the coordinators and the local Safer Neighbourhood Policing Team if they haven’t so that the police can also back us up and take a proactive role with Neighbourhood Watch.
How did you overcome any challenges?
Many schemes have been going for years and are set in their ways. But after informing the coordinators of the benefits that come as being a member of the national Neighbourhood Watch database, then they jump at the chance.
How did you cover any costs?
There were no costs involved apart from photocopying the form and the cost of the signage, which we got from a grant from MOPAC.
Force/ Borough area
LB Greenwich