Agenda and minutes

ATTENDANCE: Cllr James Hill (JH, Chair) Pauline Woodhouse (PW, Chair), Michael Macleod (MM, NBC), Jamie Wells (JW, NBC), Christian Buckenham (CB, Police), Yemi Holman (YH, Northants Police), Aideen Fogarty (AF, Town of Sanctuary), Marie Beckett (MB, Diverse Actors Guild), Kelly Jordan (KJ, Aquarius), Donald Mulwa (DM, United Africa Association).

APOLOGIES: Helen Elliott-Mainwaring, Neelam Aggarwal-Singh,

Minutes accepted.

Took up hate crime role in December.

A hate crime would be reported through the call centre to an officer.

This would then be risk assessed, and investigated further and enforcement action will be pursued if necessary.

Inspiration FM are promoting how to report as there has been a dip in reporting of hate crimes.

Q: how would you know what is a drop in hate crime or reporting?

A: Compare to national statistics and year on year reporting. Issues surrounding 101 and people are often reluctant to contact the police.

Q: What are your plans to tackle that?

A: Pushing for more online reporting, moving to a single online home, most police force websites will be very similar and the reporting tools will be the same.

Q: Hasn’t there been a rise in hate crime because of Brexit?

A: Yes, there always is when there is an issue like Brexit or a terrorist attack for example.

To create an environment for the diverse communities to become more engaged with theatre. To make an environment that they can connect with.

Start of March – workshop at the deco theatre.

Refugee week – 23^rd June – suggestion that the L2L youth group to have an evening in the guildhall to demonstrate what they do. Looking to do this in the Guildhall – Thursday 20^th June from around 6:30pm.

Going to contact schools to see if they can offer any help.

PW: In a future meeting could you have a list identifying your needs to let us know what we would do to help you.

Q: Have you tried community spaces to look for rooms?

A: No, who would be contacted?

Q: Toby Birch is a good contact, he is one of the trustees.

ACTION: Look to have someone come in to talk about settled status. Nazreen could be a good contact, invite to a future forum.

JW: We could send an e-mail out requesting items for the agenda.

PW/JH: Yes, that would be a good idea.

ACTION: MM to send out an e-mail to the circulation list to all forum members.

PW: Could you do a presentation on local statistics at a future forum?

YH: Yes I have an infographic and presentation that I could talk through and show the forum.

Kelly from Aquarius, support for drugs, alcohol and gambling.

Also do training to help people understand the risk that drugs and alcohol can have. The training is free and we are trying to reach more diverse community groups.

Q: Are you happy to just talk to groups of women and groups of men.

A: Definitely yes, we would be willing to cater for the needs of people who want to be trained.

PW: I have taken over as manager of Bellinge Community House, this is a community centre, originally set up to support local people, offers all different types of support services and different groups can come and use the facilities there. There is a proposal for donations for the use of the room.

YH: We are creating a document to help people also find another support group, whether that be age based, race based or even geographical based.

Donald: Looking to organise African day which is a celebration that is hosted each year, still looking for funding, this will be hopefully happening in May. This will be taking place on the Market Square, this is where it was last year.