CCTV, intervention schemes, and fines among action taken in Newark and Sherwood District Council’s crackdown on crime and anti-social behaviour

In just three months, CCTV across the district has helped secure 40 arrests or interventions, and identify over 80 incidents for police to follow up.

In the same period, more than 30 fixed penalty notices were issued for fly tipping, and over 200 fines were handed out for littering and dog fouling.

Newark and Sherwood District Council’s latest community plan performance report outlines a number of successes in the council’s aim to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour.

The report covers quarter two of 2024-25, from July 1 to September 30, during which time the district as a whole saw a 10% reduction in anti-social behaviour, as well as a 2% reduction in all crime.

The 2% reduction equates to 50 fewer crimes reported when compared to the same period 2023-24.

CCTV has played, and will continue to play, a key part in tackling the issue, with the council’s re-deployable cameras remaining, for the second quarter, at Wilson Street and London Road/Library Gardens in the town centre, Churchill Drive in Hawtonville, and in Kneesall Village, all of which had experienced incidents of anti-social behaviour.

The Hawtonville camera remained as a deterrent over the summer after it saw a drop in incidents in quarter one, while in Kneesall a number of injunctions were served on perpetrators.

Plans are also underway for further lighting and CCTV installations at Heron Way Car Park, Balderton, due to be completed this quarter, and at St Mary’s Garden, Newark Parish Church.

104 hours of high-visibility anti-social behaviour hotspot patrols were also carried out, in addition to normal patrols of the district, in the three months covered in the report.

Drop in sessions, beat surgeries, community engagement events, and early intervention schemes — including the district’s anti-social behaviour panel, which saw ten new young people referred — were also carried out throughout the quarter.

Elsewhere, a focus on rural and environmental crime has seen 71 fixed penalty notices for fly tipping issued in the financial year to date, and 645 fixed penalty notices for all environmental offences excluding fly tipping.

In quarter two alone, the council issued five notices on a business for failure to produce waste transfer and waste carrier documentation, two notices for abandoned vehicles, and one section 59 notice on a landowner for failing to secure their property against repeated fly tipping incidents and neglecting to remove accumulated waste.

In the Government’s local authority league table, Newark and Sherwood was named best district or borough in Nottinghamshire, and scored second place across the East Midlands for its incident to Fixed Penalty Notice ratio.