Dedicated Police Officers in Schools (705A/20)

2 October 2020 | Other

Request

Response

West Midlands Police is broken down into neighbourhood policing units (NPU) as detailed below:

Sandwell; Coventry; Solihull; Dudley; Walsall; Wolverhampton; Birmingham East and Birmingham West.

Each NPU has a slightly different approach to the matter of school based Police officers. Below you can see the result for each area.

Sandwell NPU

With regard to our schools-based Police Officers, Sandwell NPU don’t currently have any dedicated schools-based PC’s.

Within Partnerships we have one dedicated Young Persons Officer who is responsible for our 12 Alternative Providers (PRU’s and SEN schools). Those are:

Sandwell Communty School (4 campuses – Tividale, Smethwick, West Brom, Wednesbury)

Bloomfield College (2 campuses – Tipton)

Sandwell Valley School – West Bromwich

Shenstone Lodge/Brades – Tividale

Impact School – Tividale

Westminster School (SEN) – Rowley Regis

Albright (SEN) – Tipton

Compass Independent School (SEN/Behaviour) – Tipton

Within our neighbourhood teams we have schools links officers attached to the following schools:

Smethwick

Shireland Collegiate Academy

Holly Lodge Academy

Sandwell Academy

Oldbury

Perryfields Academy

Bristnall Hall Academy

Q3 Langley

Ormiston Sandwell Community Academy

Oldbury Academy

Rowley Regis

St Michaels CofE High School

Ormiston Forge Academy

Tipton

Q3 Tipton

RSA Tipton

Wednesbury

Wodensborough Academy

Wood Green Academy

Stuart Bathurst High school

West Bromwich

Phoenix Academy

George Salter Academy

West Bromwich Collegiate Academy

Q3 Great Barr

Health Futures UTC School

Sandwell College

In addition to this we have an Education Partnerships Officer (EPO) based within Partnerships with the focus of reducing youth violence within educational premises and developing partnerships around schools.

We are also currently interviewing for 2 dedicated Schools Links Officers who will be based at schools within 2 of our Impact Areas – Phoenix and Sandwell College in West Bromwich and Shireland and Holly lodge in Smethwick. These Officers will work under the coordination of the EPO.

We currently have 97 primary schools across the borough. Each one of these is policed by PCSO contact from off the relevant neighbourhood team.

Coventry NPU

Coventry NPU has 1 x schools officer (PC Jo Bowes) who supports all of the 13 x Secondary schools. They are not based at anyone school. The feedback from the schools through the school panels has been very positive. There are no plans to increase schools officers during this or the financial year 2021/22.

The North east has 2 officers who support a number of schools but are not based there.

St Michales has one officer and engages with

Blue coat Church of England school and music College.

Sydney stringer School Secondary school

Barrs Hill Secondary school

City College Coventry

Swanswell Extended Learning Centre

Solihull NPU, Walsall NPU, Dudley NPU

All have no school based officers

Wolverhampton

Wolverhampton does not have any schools based officers but we do have 2 PCSOs who work within the Partnerships team to deliver inputs to schools and assist with the Police and Schools Panel.

Birmingham east and Birmingham west

There is one School Based Police Office in Birmingham ( BE and BW) NPU’s

This is PC Richard BARBER who is based across all of the City Of Birmingham Alternative Education Provisions:-

Kings Centre, Erdington

Ashbourne Centre, Erdington

Minerva Centre

Marywood Centre

Firsbrook Centre

Link Centre

Millpool Centre

The Grove

All other areas have a School Link Officer that covers all schools on a constituency area , they are not based in one particular school. So the 10 Birmingham Constituency’s all have a dedicated School Link Officer.

The national programme of Operation Uplift that is increasing the numbers of Police Officers, may ultimately result in more officers being on NPU areas. However this is currently still under review.

Please note that to individually name all officers involved in school liaisons is not possible, as they are not always one individual person. For example a PCSO dealing with a matter at a primary school could indeed be any PCSO from the NPU team, as that is part of their role profile. Where they can be named they have been as detailed above.

We have listed the school names where possible, West Midlands is a huge area and to list every school where there is “no school based officer” may be inaccurate as some may be inadvertently missed off the list. Please note that where there are no school based officers, the NPU will engage with “safer partnership schemes” local to the area and will liaise with schools via that method.

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