VANEL have just completed delivery of a short but effective project to provide households in rural areas of North East Lincolnshire with items of personal and household safety equipment. The project, funded by a Community Safety Grant through the office of the Humberside Police and Crime Commissioner, allowed us to provide free items to help residents protect themselves, their property and their possessions and to gain some peace of mind.
The project only ran from January through to March 2024, but during that time we provided items to over 700 households reaching over 1300 residents in total.
Items provided included personal alarms; simple stick on window and door alarms; timer switches; torches; property marking kits; pretend tins to hide valuables; padlocks and more. Requests were made directly by residents (mainly online) or through a network of local partners including Neighbourhood Policing teams; ward councillors; parish clerks; community group leaders; community hubs and more. These same supporters helped deliver items once ready or served as pick up points for residents to collect from. VANEL are extremely grateful to the support of all these local representatives from their communities who helped make the project the success it was.
This particular project focused on rural wards in North East Lincolnshire that have missed out on previous projects similar to this. Every town, village, ward and area has a different set of demographics; community venues and groups and different networks. So, the project has also been interesting to see how we could quickly reach residents in these different areas.
An important part of this project was to track requests and support so that we could build up evidence of need and support across the area.
We know from our data now that in Humberston/New Waltham ward we supported around 263 households.
In Waltham: 124 households
Immingham: 111
Freshney: 75
Scartho: 61
Wolds: 38
Yarborough: 24 (we were only supporting Laceby Acres area)
Our data collection also indicates that around 450 households were older people; 120+ declared a disability and over 30 declared as victims of crime.
The project also allowed useful information about community safety issues to be shared with every household too through distribution of “Stay Safe” guides; No Cold Caller window stickers, and Police prepared “Crime Prevention” booklets. Distribution partners such as Police officers; ward councillors or community groups were also able to talk to recipients of the items about a wider range of issues too.
This was a very rapid project which wouldn’t have been as effective without the support our our network of partners – to whom we are grateful.
As a result of the project VANEL has also now worked with Ward Councillors in a variety of wards who have committed some of their local ward funding to provide similar sorts of household safety items to residents in their wards and this continuation part of the programme will evolved during 2024.
So, what’s next?
This specific rural support project is now closed. However, using ward funding and remaining stocks of equipment, we’re now able to provide similar sorts of equipment to a much smaller number of residents/households in certain areas of North East Lincolnshire. But our normal route for supporting people will be through referrals from partners such as local Policing teams; ward councillors; housing partnership representatives and so on who will help identify those in most need in their areas.
We’ll be encouraging partners to refer households to us in the following wards:
Immingham; Wolds; Waltham; Freshney; Scartho; Croft Baker; Heneage; South.
There is still an online request form at www.nelwatch.org.uk/request2024 where technically anyone – partner or resident – can place a request. But we now have to prioritise requests according to need and location and delivery times may increase.
Keep an eye on our website at www.vanel.org.uk/equipmentwhere we’ll post updates as to new approaches and offers.
Any questions contact Karl Elliott at VANEL – karl@vanel.org.uk
Extra information
Stay Safe guides can be found at www.staysafenel.com
The Police guide to crime prevention can be downloaded as a .pdf here.
No Cold Caller Window stickers can be requested via VANEL or from the community hub at 82 Grimsby Road. Or please ask your local ward councillors, policing team or community venues and we’ll try to distribute stickers further.
If you’re looking to purchase household security items privately then look for Sold Secure logos on products or start with the Defender store on Amazon.
Some images from the project:
