Crime: Essex
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to increase levels of police (a) visibility and (b) presence to help tackle (i) youth violence and (ii) knife crime in (A) Essex and (B) South Basildon and East Thurrock constituency.
Answered by Sarah Jones
Knife crime has destroyed far too many lives. That is why, as part of the Safer Streets mission, we are working to halve knife crime within a decade.
We have a comprehensive, data-led and Government-wide approach to this goal. Driving down youth-related violence across the UK, including Essex South Basildon and East Thurrock, will play a key role in meeting this ambition.
To increase police visibility and presence, the Government has introduced the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, which ensures neighbourhood policing teams are spending the majority of their time within their communities, delivering visible patrols and actively engaging with residents and businesses.
Essex Police have also been allocated £1.63m for 2025/26 to deliver the Hotspot Action programme. This programme is a combination of increased high visibility foot patrols and funding of problem-oriented policing (POP) tactics. POP is bespoke to the local areas to tackle the underlying drivers of crime using a comprehensive menu of policing interventions, such as increased targeted knife sweeps, and licensed premises checks.
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