Introduction
Tension monitoring is, in the main, currently a police led activity. Local police services file weekly reports to their local command unit and these are forwarded to the National Community Tensions Team (NCTT) which collates the national picture. Some local authorities also make returns to their regional Government Office for submission to the Communities and Faiths Unit of the Department for Communities and Local Government. These, together with the NCTT reports are used to produce a monthly assessment for government.
The primary purpose of monitoring community tension, however, is to inform local action. This guide aims to help local agencies and communities to get 'upstream' of problems and manage tensions through a measured partnership response. It is based on a strategy of establishing a multi-agency approach to improve communication, information sharing and community engagement to manage tensions. Early interventions will often not be led by the Police and will generally comprise a range of measures carried out by a diversity of public agencies, predicting and anticipating events based on good quality comprehensive information and intelligence garnered by the partnership pooling their knowledge and expertise.
Local authority and other local information and intelligence, if brought together effectively, could supplement the Police's own model of gathering information on community tensions which is categorised into 'evidenced', 'experienced' and 'potential' (EEP). The information available to authorities and their partners will often not be related to crime and be under the police radar and, as such, it can support a predictive and preventative approach to dealing with community tensions.
In summary, the guide seeks to join up quantitative and qualitative information so that agencies can better understand community dynamics and work together to prepare better responses where there is tension developing.
Community dynamics are, by definition, hard to pin down. They are about change and a diversity of forces and influences. However, in the analyses of community disturbances and conflicts, underlying causes or warning signs are identifiable - often building up long before the 'spark' that ignites an incident. This guide brings together lessons learned and good practice from around the country into an integrated framework.
The guide is organised into three parts:
- Part one describes the process for setting up a tension monitoring system, getting people engaged and learning the basic techniques.
- Part two sets out five tools to build into the tension monitoring system to make it more sophisticated. It includes techniques to understand how communities are feeling, how we share information, using open source information and using data more effectively. There is a new tool which is advice for managers of frontline staff to guide them in the kind of practical signs and signals which may indicate tensions and how to report them.
- Part three suggests some of the options for interventions in the event that tensions are raised and includes community led approaches, interagency approaches and stresses the importance of communications.
