Report Summary
This report outlines key findings from the joint SPA and Police Scotland survey conducted as part of the first phase of the Community Confidence Action Research Project work in Letham along with Your Police Survey data for 2021-22 and 2022-23.
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Conclusions and Key Findings
While high levels of respondents agree Letham has a strong sense of community, it is notable that one quarter of respondents to the Letham survey disagreed. It is also notable that the majority of respondents who commented in this section noted negative views on the area, primarily relating to antisocial behaviour, drug use and alcohol use. Your Police Survey respondents also highlighted these concerns along with youth disorder.
It is important to note that the highest proportion of respondents scored ‘Low’ confidence for the majority of indicators. Further, the second most common response was only ‘High’ for policing in general. The Your Police Survey shows an increase in those who are not confident police in their area from 19% (n=6) last year to 41% (n=17) in 2022/23. This suggests that there are issues around confidence in policing in the Letham area.
Regarding trust in police, the highest proportion scored ‘medium’ trust, with the second most common being ‘low’ – aside from ‘In general’ which scored high. This suggests that while there are issues of trust in the Letham area, there is a greater level of trust than there is of confidence.
When scoring how good a job local policing were doing in the area, the highest proportion of respondents selected ‘a neither good nor poor job’ across all scenarios. This is more positive than SPA national polling for ‘tackling antisocial behaviour’ and ‘bringing the community together’ where the highest proportion scored ‘Low’. However, the picture in Letham is more negative in relation to ‘policing in general’, ‘keeping your area safe’ and ‘tackling crime’ which scored positively in the SPA national polling. Fewer respondents to the Your Police Survey also agree police are doing a good job in their local area - 41% (n=13) in 2021/22 to 17% (n=7) in 2022/23).
The majority of respondents noted no changes in local police engagement and stated that their view of policing locally had not changed in the past six months.
Across the survey comments relating to policing largely related to a lack of police presence/visibility. There were also some comments relating to police not dealing with issues which was a strong view in the Your Police Survey data.
