Community Focus Group (12th November 2025)

Making Darwin Green a safer place
By Quentin |
Categories:
Tags:

The Community Focus meeting on 12th November 2025 focused on safety and building partnerships in Darwin Green. The session brought together representatives from Cambridgeshire Police, Cambridge City Council’s Public Safety Team, and Neighbourhood Watch to discuss how residents can contribute to a safer community.

Councillor Simon Smith opened the meeting by emphasising the importance of building a good community and fostering partnerships between all the agencies involved in keeping Darwin Green safe. Representatives from the different organisations took over to explain their roles, to explain how to report issues, and to call for volunteers to join the Neighbourhood Watch.

If a crime is being committed or someone could be harmed, always call the police on 999.

Neighbourhood Watch

Carol is a representative for the Neighbourhood Watch (NW), and presented the organisation as a way to get the community working together and help residents get to know their neighbours. The national team is based in London. The organisation covers different areas, such as Cambridgeshire.

How it works

  • Local schemes are formed where groups of people become members and log in online.
  • Members take ownership of what happens in their area.
  • Any concerns can be reported through the scheme (but if a crime is being committed, call 999 straight away).
  • Neighbourhood Watch is for sharing intelligence, such as spikes in thefts in the area. The organisation collaborates with various agencies such as police forces, and passes information to coordinators. Coordinators for local schemes pass down the information to other members in their areas.

Benefits and features

  • Sometimes the police will feed information back to NW about incidents like burglaries.
  • The scheme is not just about crime, it also focuses on “well-being” in the neighbourhood, between neighbours: reduces loneliness, makes people meet and know their neighbours, and so on.
  • NW signs act as a deterrent, similar to car alarms, for example.

Question: How is it different from the WhatsApp community chat? NW allows people to get and share information from outside their immediate circle. The community chat tends to be more limited in that regard, with information not going anywhere beyond the group once it’s been shared.

Organisation

  • The NW works with local “schemes” run by a coordinator. The area covered can vary: a single street, multiple streets, or just the two immediate neighbouring houses from the coordinator. Carol explained that she would be looking at splitting Darwin Green into smaller pockets rather than having just one coordinator for the entire development.
  • Coordinator’s tasks include keeping people informed in the area, sharing updates from the national team (for example: SCAM alerts, theft spike in the area)
  • Coordinators are also responsible for recruitment within their scheme so they can develop a network over time
  • The coordinator chooses how to pass information and can use a WhatsApp group if they decide to
  • Privacy: Only the coordinator knows who is in the Neighbourhood Watch

Joining

You can join as a member, or as a coordinator.

  • As a member, you will simply get information about your area. There’s nothing else to do.
  • If you join a local scheme, then you can report ASB (“anything that makes you feel uncomfortable”).
  • As a coordinator, you can set up a new local scheme, you receive and pass down information to the members of your scheme, and you may try to enroll new members in your area to grow your community.

To join the Neighbourhood Watch, visit their website.

Council Public Safety Team

Sarah from the Council’s Public Safety Team explained their role in the community.

The team handles many forms of Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB): this can be fly tipping or littering, situations where someone is shouting or engaging in angry activities that impact residents, etc.

The team works with various partners including landlords, housing owners, and police. They receive and assess reports, decide who needs to be involved. They also issue community protection warnings and notices, and work with housing associations, who are primarily responsible for dealing with their own tenants.

The team can look into installing CCTV in areas that are hotspots for ASB, though sometimes this just moves the problem around the corner.

If concerned about ASB and not sure what to do, reach out to the team: the best way to do so is via the online form on Cambridge City Council’s website.

The Public Safety Team is not an immediate response team. For criminal activities or situations where someone could be harmed, call the police on 999.

Cambridgeshire Police

The police representative explained their role in the area, which covers the city centre, Newnham, Eddington, and surrounding areas.

Local policing approach

Officers get to know the issues in their area and try to address them. They work with the Council’s Public Safety Team and may develop plans of action. While 999 calls for emergencies might bring a different officer each time, the local team tries to address longer-term issues in the area. They regularly patrol in the area, they’re out and about.

How to report

“Report, report, report.” If you don’t tell the police they won’t come here.

  • Crime in action (need immediate intervention): call 999
  • Non-emergency inquiries (crime that has already finished): call 101. Sometimes there’s a lot of waiting. Try hanging on, but if you hang up, police will call back.
  • Anonymous reporting: use CrimeStoppers to report anonymously.

Reporting matters. Some people have experienced reports that go nowhere: they get a crime number and that’s it, nothing seems to happen. The officer explained that sometimes there’s just no evidence, so officers spend their time on other cases. That doesn’t mean nothing happens - police might have put in a request for CCTV to the city, or the report might relate to a series of incidents. Reporting helps police build up a picture of what’s happening in the area, which is essential to understand what happens, find patterns, and help protect the area.

Funding challenges

Alas, the officer noted that Cambridgeshire is among the lowest funded police forces in the country, despite massive growth in Cambridge. Resources are limited, and officers can’t be everywhere.

Notes

  • New NW coordinators aren’t on their own: Carol mentioned she would help coordinators at the beginning and then progressively step back as they become established.

  • Doorbell cameras and Neighbourhood Watch

    • If you phone the police and mention your doorbell captured an incident, you’ll get a link to upload your footage.
    • There was discussion about camera quality - one case wasn’t prosecuted because the picture quality wasn’t good enough.
    • However, cases have been solved in Darwin Green in the past thanks to doorbell cameras.

  • If Neighbourhood Watch is set up in Darwin Green, there’s some funding available from the Council for items like signs (around £6 for smaller white signs, £12 for larger yellow signs).

  • It’s easier to put NW signs on lampposts before the streets have been adopted by the Council, at the moment it just needs approval from Barratt.

Get involved

All three organisations encourage people to meet and support their neighbours, and to consider joining the Neighbourhood Watch. To find more details or to join the organisation, visit the Neighbourhood Watch website.