Agenda item

(Director  of Communities) to consider the attached report.

Assistant Director for Community Services and Customer Relations, J Chandler introduced the report on the Home Office funding for the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism – the ‘Prevent Duty’ that came into force for local authorities on 1^st July 2015.

In October 2015, the Council received notification from the Home Office, that it would be allocating £10,000 to all local authorities (excluding priority areas) as a one off payment in this financial year, for the delivery of specific work to support the implementation of the Prevent Duty.

All Councils were required to apply for the funding and needed to present a plan on how the money would be spent. The application on behalf of EFDC focussed on two distinct areas of work; the upgrading of the Council’s IT systems to prevent misuse of IT for extremist material, and, the provision of a Prevent Education Programme within the district’s  local secondary schools, for both pupils and teachers.

The Council was successful in its application for prevent funding and the Council’s ICT Department had undertaken the work to improve security to IT infrastructure by the upgrading of a number of Firewalls to improve protection for ICT connectivity to remote offices and the installation of a number of Branch Routers to improve ICT connectivity and security for Home Workers.

In regard to Prevent Education work, the Council’s Community, Health and Wellbeing Team initially consulted with the secondary schools in the district to ascertain their perceived need for Prevent training for pupils and staff, and found that all schools were very keen to be provided with support.

Nationally recognised Training programme ‘Me and You Education’ was therefore commissioned to undertake the delivery of in-schools Prevent work and this has been delivered to pupils in years 7 – 13.

Out of the schools visited, Ongar Academy, which was a very new school in the district, opted for a programme of teacher training. Officers from the Council therefore attended a half day training session alongside the teachers, which they found was very useful for building on knowledge about Right Wing and Muslim Extremism; identification of vulnerabilities and how to report concerns.

It was noted that the Prevent Training had been offered to Epping Forest College, but the offer had been declined. 

It was also noted that the £10,000 funding had not been sufficient to cover the education programme and that the Council had to supplement it.

Councillor Waller added that the Home Office was impressed with how we used our funding and with what we provided. As the Home Office was so impressed we may well get back the extra £2,000 we had to put in. It was a shame that we had not managed to get into Epping Forest College.

Councillor Neville asked why the college had not taken up our offer. He was told that officers had heard that they would be providing their own programme as they considered that they had their own expertise on their staff.  Councillor Breare-Hall added that they had been involved in a lot of this prevent initiative before and had built up internal expertise on this.

Councillor Patel asked about the older youths aged between 18 and 20, what were we doing to address them? Ms Chandler said that the funding was only for schools; also it was difficult to engage with people who had left education as we did not have the ability to target them.

Councillor Surtees considered that the college should be co-ordinating with us on the Prevent Agenda and also on the British Value Agenda. We also needed to develop some community awareness and community responsibility on this and to engage with the community generally so that what was done at school was not lost.

Councillor Brady asked if this was just a one off grant for this year. She was told that it was, but officers had decided to put something like this into the Reality Road Show that they ran every year in schools.

RESOLVED:

That Select Committee noted the report on work undertaken in the district in relation to the Home Office Prevent agenda, which had been funded through a £10,000 grant from the Home Office.