Justice Minister Wants 'Local Partnerships'

Local communities can change their own environment - by working in partnership with others and so be empowered to make their own neighbourhoods safer.

Justice Minister David Ford has vowed to build local partnerships while addressing delegates at today's National Community Safety Conference in Belfast.

The Minister pledged to support communities in their efforts to change the places in which they live.

"Real safety will come when everyone can live free of fear and until now, we have resorted too readily to building walls to protect people – but the real route to protecting people is to remove violence, to tackle its causes, to build connections rather than barriers.

"Excellent examples of this are already underway and as we develop a new Community Safety Strategy, I want to support local initiatives," he said.

"We can do this by starting to redirect government funding away from maintaining divides and towards creating shared spaces, not in a top down, government knows best way, but in a grass-roots community-led way.

"We must support community initiatives and give people incentives for changing the places in which they live," he continued.

The Minister also outlined how he sees strong partnership working as being integral to delivering significant differences to quality of life.

He said: "Community safety is much wider than my Department alone. If we are to make a real, tangible difference we need the buy-in, ideas and commitment from within, across and beyond government departments.

"I will therefore take the opportunity that devolution affords to lead a debate on what a new Community Safety Strategy should include and I want it to be developed in the context of shared communities and shared space.

"I want to build on the work that is already being delivered and to identify what works best at a community level.

"I want to see real partnership that empowers local communities to deliver local solutions to local problems," he insisted.

The Minister also told delegates that while crime is on the decrease in Northern Ireland, there is no room for complacency.

"The British Crime Survey has shown that the risk of becoming a victim of crime remains lower in Northern Ireland than in England and Wales and our overall crime rates are falling.

"This does not mean however that we do not have issues to address. Many problems still exist and there is still much more to be done but I believe we have a strong platform on which to build," he concluded.

The delegates were welcomed to the conference by the new Lord Mayor of Belfast, Councillor Pat Convery and heard from PSNI Chief Constable, Matt Baggott.

(BMcc/GK)