Community Safety
West Somerset Council together with the Police; Police Authority; Fire and Rescue Service; Primary Care Trust and the Probation Service have a legal duty to work in partnership to tackle crime and disorder together with anti social behaviour; drug and alcohol abuse; re-offending and environmental harm. Other partners, who are involved with this work locally, include Magna Housing West Somerset and Exmoor National Park Authority.
We deliver these duties through our membership of the Safer Somerset West Community Safety Partnership which includes representatives from Sedgemoor and Taunton Deane Council areas. This partnership is currently working, via an informal merger with the same body in the East of the County to form a County wide Community Safety Partnership. We are also represented on the county wide Safer Somerset Group which produces an annually refreshed strategic assessment of the current and future threats and challenges to Community Safety in the County. A sanitised version and a summary of this document is available on the right hand side of this page. Also available are the partnership plan and a summary of that plan detailing how we will tackle the challenges identified within the strategic assessment.
West Somerset has very low crime levels and these have been steadily falling over the past years. This area has one of the lowest crime levels in the Country. However, the perception of crime and anti social behaviour does not match these crime levels. Work is ongoing to provide reassurance to residents and visitors alike.
West Somerset incorporates 11 Police Beat areas with many of them covering vast and very sparsely populated areas. Minehead is the only sizeable town and main settlement where about 1/3rd of the total population of West Somerset reside (total population being 35,300).
For further information, contact Customer Services on (01643) 703704 or email customerservices@westsomerset.gov.uk
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