Lambeth seeks to end gang rule with release of youth strategy

Lambeth's local strategic partnership, Lambeth First, has given the green light to Young & Safe in Lambeth, a strategy designed to reduce young people's involvement in gangs.

The plan will bring together the council, police, youth offending team, local people and voluntary groups. It sets out a series of initiatives to combat gang crime including the creation of an intelligence unit to share information between agencies. The youth service has also been given £1.7m to create new programmes for young people.

The idea is similar to the Association of Chief Police Officers' youth toolkit (CYP Now, 30 January-6 February).

Chief inspector Sharon Rowe, of Lambeth Police, said the strategy would provide more youth crime prevention services and help the police engage further with young people. She said Operation Layer Cake - where officers return to back-to-basics policing and engage with young people in particular areas - would be expanded.

"If you find a young person out at the wrong time in the wrong place you talk to them and take them inside with their parents," she said. "We're finding that a lot of the time parents don't know what their children are doing and the child says they need help."

The strategy was put together in response to last year's spate of gang-related murders in the capital. It proposes setting up support services in schools that target young people thought likely to get involved in gangs, and initiatives to increase the role of black and minority ethnic voluntary organisations. The plan also calls for a broader range of diversionary activities for young people.

But Bianca Waite, a youth worker at Lambeth anti-gang programme X-it, said young people wanted less talk about gun crime and more action. "The money spent on all these consultations could be used in so many different ways," she said. "It needs to be spent on community-based programmes - they're the things that are working."

- www.lambethfirst.org.uk.