Community safety
Community safety is about making places safer for people and addressing local concerns. How safe an area feels is affected by many factors including levels of crime and anti-social behaviour, noise nuisance, young people hanging around the streets, litter, graffiti and abandoned vehicles. The police, councils, other local organisations and communities themselves all have an important part to play in making places feel safer.
Through our assessment and audit work, we have helped to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of England's community safety services.
We appoint auditors who carry out audits of local police bodies, councils and other local public services and report annually on their findings. Information about our approach to audit and annual audit letters can be found in our audit regime pages.
In 2000 we started carrying out inspections of local government services, under the Local Government Act 1999. We carried out and published 2,014 inspections of local government services between 2000 and 2011. We also carried out assessments of councils under the Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) from 2002 to 2009. In April 2009 we replaced CPA with the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA). CAA ended in May 2010.
We looked at community safety issues as part of these inspections and assessments.
During 2009/10 we inspected 22 police authorities with Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) (external link).
We also carried out Use of Resources (UoR) assessments in councils and police authorities from 2005/06 until 2008/09.
We have played a significant role in developing and using performance information to help local public services improve for many years. Our performance information web pages set out information about the approach we took and what we learnt from our work. One aspect of our work was to improve police data quality.
We produced Value for Money profiles for police services until 2010. Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) now produce Value for Money profiles for police services.
In the past, the Audit Commission published a series of national reports and studies on community safety issues. Our reports were based on independent, authoritative analysis of national evidence and local practice and helped to improve the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of local public services.
We produced a briefing on anti-social behaviour to summarise our work in this area. The briefing captured key messages from the Commission's former research, and provides links to relevant national publications, case studies and tools.