We're celebrating a successful Community Action Day in Flitwick
Wednesday, 13 October 2021
On Friday 8 October 2021, we held another successful Community Action Day, this time in Flitwick.
Community Safety, Environmental Services and Housing Services officers worked together with Bedfordshire Police and Bedfordshire Fire Service to carry out high visibility patrols, business visits, tidying of areas, fire prevention advice, as well as making noticeable improvements to the local area, in response to residents’ feedback.
Safer Neighbourhood officers and Street Watch volunteers walked around Flitwick, with colleagues from Grand Union Housing Group and Bedfordshire Police talking to residents, providing information about their services and how to report issues.
We held several stalls in Millennium Park, Dunstable Road, with teams talking to residents and businesses, sharing advice and information and prevention advice about a range of community safety issues, giving out dog poo bags, pens, torches, and information leaflets and the Safer Central Survey. Residents also had the opportunity to talk to our Leisure team about the services on offer and the Bedfordshire Stop Smoking Service.
Our Parking Enforcement team offered advice and guidance to residents, answering questions as well as carrying out their daily duties in hot spot area. Our Highways team was also in the area, repairing roads and pavements.
Our Environment Services team also undertook a deep clean of Flitwick town centre, in addition to their normal cleaning duties in the area.
Safer Communities and Partnership officers, British Transport Police along with the Rail Enforcement team from Thameslink and Revenue Protection conducted Operation Hawkeye, an enforcement operation for fare evasion at Flitwick Train Station. In total there three penalty charge notices were issued by rail enforcement officers.
Our Safer Business Officer and Safer Engagement Officer visited businesses to discuss anti-social behaviour issues affecting trade.
Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service promoted its free Safe And Well checks, whilst a number of Bedfordshire Police officers, spoke to residents offering crime prevention advice.
The Community Payback Service worked in partnership with Flitwick town council to tidy up allotments. Local councillors also held their councillor surgery to talk to residents about any issues they want to raise.
Councillor Ian Dalgarno, our Executive Member for Community Services said:
Our community action day in Flitwick last week was a huge success. It was a wonderful opportunity for our officers to meet with residents and to hear about what issues need to be addressed in the area.
We were really pleased to be joined by so many of our teams, residents and our partner agencies and would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who attended to make it such an enjoyable and productive event.
Days like this help us collect area-specific feedback, and we’ll now be working to explore how we can use this to improve community safety within the local community.