To approve as a correct record the minutes of the Hidden and Extreme Harms Prevention Committee held on 17 January 2022.

The minutes of the Hidden and Extreme Harms Prevention Committee held on the 17 January 2022 were approved as a correct record.

To receive additional items that the Chair is of the opinion should be

considered as a matter of urgency, in accordance with Section 100B

(4) (b) of the Local Government Act 1972.

There were no urgent items of business.

There were no interests declared.

Michelle Cunningham presented the report. This report would support Member’s role to ensure the Council fulfilled its duties regarding Prevent and it was important to acknowledge the links between the prevent agenda and the monitoring and tackling of hate crime. Members were informed that the comparison of hate crime and prevent referrals did not imply a causal link between hate crime and extremism however the quarterly counter terrorism local profile had highlighted areas with a low proportion of prevent referrals in comparison to hate crime reports and was an indicator that there may be vulnerabilities to extremism. For Thurrock for 12 months ending July 2021 the rate was 0.1 prevent referrals to 7.2 hate crime reports. Some of the key points taken from the report:

·         There were 5 strands of hate crime and from October 2021, Essex Police made changes in the recording of hate crime where the primary motivation of the perpetrator was directed toward the sex/gender of the victim and that gender based hate crime would now be recorded.

·         The Community Safety Partnership (CSP) proposed the priority for 2022/23 remained as “reduce harm to and safeguard victims from hate crime – including sex/gender based hate crime”.

·         Thurrock had seen an increase of 30% in reporting and was widely acknowledged that this remained an unreported crime and was seen as a positive by both Police and partners.

·         Hate crime was monitored daily by Essex Police, the Inspector completes eight case reviews a month and these are based on hate crime and were reported fortnightly at Police tasking for any trends. The CSP monitored community tensions fortnightly through the locality action groups which also dealt with referrals in relation to victims of hate crime. Hate crime was reported bi-monthly to our executive, quarterly to our prevent board and annually to the CSP strategic board. There were no repeat locations or victims and none identified community tensions linked to this increase.

·         Through the Thurrock’s Independent Advisory Group (IAG) to Essex Police there were two community challenge panels in place one in Thurrock for the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) community and through the IAG transgender rep, on the Essex wide challenge panel. It had been identified there was a lack of confidence in coming forward and there was a long way to go to close the gap in relation to unreported crimes/incidents. To support this Thurrock had 256 officers trained as ambassadors; nine hate incident reporting centres, hosted two street events for National Hate Crime Awareness Week including a focus on engagement with businesses in Grays supported by our hate crime ambassador Councillor Abbas; supported a pop up event on hate crime in Grays as part of Safeguarding Adults Awareness Week; hate crime officers offered a disability hate and mate crime webinar which was now being offered out to Thurrock colleges and special needs schools; worked to support learning disabled community to report and understand hate crime; hate crime overview was included within the Prevent training offer and Transliving recently  ...  view the full minutes text for item 19.

Members signed off the work programme for 2021/22.