Havant Neighbourhood Watch and Waterlooville and District Neighbourhood Watch are important members of the Safer Havant Partnership.
You can help to make your community safer by joining your local scheme. Neighbourhood Watch is one of the most successful crime prevention schemes ever, working not only to reduce crime but to build community spirit and good relations. It brings local people closer together with the common goal of tackling crime and disorder and keeping an eye on each others property.
Contact Waterlooville and District Neighbourhood Watch Association on 023 9289 2627 and Havant Neighbourhood Watch Association on 023 9289 9061.
- Waterlooville and District Neighbourhood Watch Association >> (external link)
- Havant Neighbourhood Watch Association >> (external link)
Why, when and how to contact the police: reporting crimes and other incidents
“We often hear members of the public, including our own Neighbourhood Watch members, complain that incidents are not worth reporting, because nothing happens. This is just not true”.
Ken Legg, Treasurer of Waterlooville and District Neighbourhood Watch on the importance of making that call
“We often hear members of the public, including our own Neighbourhood Watch members, complain that incidents are not worth reporting, because nothing happens.
This is just not true; it is just that people do not know what happens. If you expect a police car with its blue lights flashing and its sirens blaring to turn up within five minutes of your call, you are usually being unrealistic. The fact is that all incidents are recorded, and the information is used to inform the pattern of policing in your area. It just isn’t possible to give individual feedback to everybody who calls in with an incident, but the overall patterns are discussed by the police, the local council and by members of your committee, which includes your Neighbourhood Watch Area Coordinator.
“So please remember, your call really does count! It is only when everybody knows what the problems are and where they are occurring that we can work together to find solutions.”
Emergencies
Please only use 999 to report emergency situations. There is a helpful mnemonic to remember when to use 999:
Phone 999 only if
Offenders are nearby
Life is at risk
Injury is caused or threatened
Crime or disorder is in progress
Emergency situations
Calls to this number will be routed to Hampshire Constabulary’s Control Room in Netley, where an operator (who may be a police officer or a civilian employee), will take all relevant details before deciding upon a course of action. This may well mean an immediate deployment of a police unit to investigate the incident, but this does depend upon the priority of the incident when measured against other reported incidents in the local district and the availability of police resources.
Where it is not possible to provide an immediate response, the call handler will normally be able to give you an ETA (estimated time of arrival); this may be anything up to two hours from the time of your call, depending on the priority grading given to your call and the availability of units to deploy. If it is not possible to achieve the ETA, you should receive a follow-up call to keep you informed.
The Control Room uses sophisticated mapping technology to pinpoint the incident based upon the information you are able to provide, therefore a post code is always most helpful. As an alternative to 999, you can use the EU-wide emergency number, 112.
Non-emergency numbers
When contacting Hampshire Constabulary on any matter which does not justify the use of the 999 Emergency service, please use
-
101
this will be charged at a flat rate of 15p, whether from a landline or from a mobile telephone.
(This is a single non-emergency number which has been used in Hampshire for some years which has now been rolled out across the UK during 2011 for contacting any police force on non-emergency matters. It is possible to make contact with any police force, even if the call is being made from another police area.)
Calls to this number can be used to make contact with staff at any Police Station or Police Department in England and Wales, as well as to report any incidents of crime or disorder which do not fall within the designation of an emergency situation.
What happens when you report a non-emergency incident will depend upon the circumstances, and may include one or more of the following, after the operator has obtained details from you:
- On some occasions the incident may be escalated by the operator to an emergency situation, in which case your call will be transferred to the Control Room (see ‘999 Emergencies’, above).
- The incident may be reported to your local Safer Neighbourhoods Team, so that they are aware of what is happening on their patch. A member of the SNT may make contact with you to discuss the incident in more detail, but the fact that they do not make contact should not be taken as an indication that they have not been made aware.
- The data is made available to your local council’s Community Safety Team, who work closely with the police and various other agencies to combat low-level crime and anti-social behaviour.
- You may ask for, or be offered, an appointment to meet with an officer at an agreed time and place, which may be at a police station or at your home address, to discuss the issues which led to your call. Officers allocated to these pre-arranged appointments are ring-fenced to ensure that they are not diverted for other operational requirements.
In addition to the numbers above, there are alternative means of communication available to those with hearing difficulties.
If you want action taken, you need to make sure that somebody knows about it, so make that call!
You can also make direct contact with your local police officers, by email, by telephone, or by attending one of their regular “surgeries”.
- Further information on your police Safer Neighbourhood Team >>
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