About Neighbourhood Watch
The first Neighbourhood Watch scheme in Britain started in the early 1980’s and has since grown to 155,000 watches covering 6 million households and roughly 10 million people. It is thought that Neighbourhood Watch has expanded further since these figures were revealed by the British Crime Survey in 2000.
Neighbourhood Watch is the coming together of residents and the police with support from various authorities such the local council and Police Authority. Its strength comes from the community looking out for each other involving simple, neighbourly tasks:
- Reporting suspicious activity to the police
- Sharing information on recent local crimes with neighbours (increasing vigilance & crime prevention awareness)
- Checking on vulnerable neighbours after an incident (creating a caring community)
- Discussing ongoing concerns with neighbours
A working watch scheme creates a stronger community and has the potential to lower crime, or if you are already enjoying a low level of crime it can help to keep it that way. The power of Neighbourhood Watch can also be used when a community wishes to tackle a specific problem. By calling a meeting and inviting the police a community can speak with one voice representing everyone in the street, estate or area. This coming together will help the police receive a clear understanding of the issue and will work with the community to resolve the problem and bring in other authorities to help if necessary.
Home Watch is a similar type of watch scheme and is used in place of Neighbourhood Watch in certain parts of the country.
Watch schemes can be substantially enhanced if OWL is used to manage all of your watches online. OWL allows coordinators to easily administrate their own watches and swiftly pass on information to neighbours while the police can quickly send out important messages using additional methods of communication. If your watch scheme is interested in using OWL please mention it to your Neighbourhood Watch officer at your local police station .
Shop Watch, Pub Watch, School Watch...
There are dozens of different watch schemes operating around the UK to include businesses and all sorts of organisations. Examples are School Watch, Farm Watch, Shop Watch, Petrol Watch, Hospital Watch, Horse Watch, College Watch and so on.
These watch schemes generally don't share the same structure as Neighbourhood Watch (with street, area and ward coordinators) but the operating principles are similar.
OWL supports all of these watch schemes allowing the police to communicate quickly and directly with businesses and organisations to increasing awareness and therefore minimise the chance of a crime reoccurring.
Watch Structures
Neighbourhood Watch schemes are usually managed by the police or in partnership with a Neighbourhood Watch Association. Some schemes have Ward Coordinators who are volunteers overseeing watches within their ward. Some wards are then broken down into areas with Area Coordinators overseeing a village or a part of a town who in turn oversee Street Coordinators.
Each Street Coordinator looks after a watch, sometimes with help from a deputy, with a watch consisting of members who are ordinary residents. This full structure isn't in place everywhere. In some places only Street Coordinators are necessary if there are a small number of watches to manage.
OWL fully supports these structures, big and small, making online management of watches much easier where each coordinator or police user can securely administrate everything they are entitled to do so in one place.
Further Information
The Home Office provide training materials for coordinators. Please ignore references to the National Neighbourhood Watch Association as the organisation no longer exists.
Home Office's Neighbourhood Watch site.
Purpose Statement issued by the Home Office. (Microsoft Word is required to open the document)
In 2007 the National Strategy Group for Watch Issues was formed to discuss watch issues at a national level. Its steering group is made of up of representatives from the Home Office, ACPO and other key organisations. Another group was set up called Neighbourhood & Home Watch Network for regional NHW representatives to meet at a national level. From their website you can find your regional rep if you wish to contact them.