Sandwell Says It Consulted Us. Lovely. So Where Are the People?

Sandwell Says It Consulted Us. Lovely. So Where Are the People?

Sandwell Council has been busy telling us how seriously it takes community safety.

Crime. Anti-social behaviour. CCTV. Shop closures. Fires. Modern slavery. Cuckooing. Hate crime. Safe Spaces. Street racing. Youth safety.

There's certainly no shortage of initiatives, press releases, partnerships, operations, strategies, logos or photographs of people standing next to banners.

And now we're heading towards a shiny new Sandwell Community Safety Strategy 2026–2030.

Apparently, we've all helped shape it.

Wonderful.

There's just one slight problem.

How many of us actually did?

Because I've been digging through the paperwork and, at the moment, Sandwell appears remarkably reluctant to tell us.

WE ASKED, YOU SAID... HOW MANY OF YOU SAID IT?

There was a consultation.

Let's make that absolutely clear.

The Community Safety Strategy Consultation 2025 ran from 29 August until 3 October 2025 and was open to people who live, work or study in Sandwell.

People were asked about crime, anti-social behaviour, how safe they felt, what worried them and what they thought Sandwell's priorities should be.

So far, so good.

Then we reach the results.

Apparently:

“People shared...”

“You highlighted...”

and there was apparently:

“strong support...”

Excellent.

But how many people?

Twenty?

Fifty?

Five hundred?

Five thousand?

We don't know.

At least, Sandwell's published summary doesn't appear to tell us.

And that rather matters.

If 18 people out of 20 support something, that's 90%.

Sounds impressive.

But it is hardly the same as 4,500 people out of 5,000 saying it.

Percentages and phrases such as “strong support” aren't terribly useful if nobody tells you how many people answered the question.

WHERE ARE THE RESULTS?

I've looked.

Where is the detailed consultation report?

Where is the breakdown by town?

West Bromwich?

Wednesbury?

Tipton?

Oldbury?

Smethwick?

Rowley Regis?

Where is the ward breakdown?

Where are the demographics?

How many respondents were ordinary residents?

How many worked for public bodies?

How many were voluntary organisations?

How many community groups responded?

Which ones?

Where are the tables showing how people answered each question?

Where are the anonymised comments?

Where is the report showing what actually changed in the strategy as a result of what residents said?

At present, the public trail appears remarkably thin.

And that is particularly odd because Sandwell manages to publish response numbers for other consultations.

Some consultations tell us eight people responded.

Others tell us 70 people responded.

Others tell us nearly 800 responded.

They can even tell us about meetings, workshops, paper questionnaires and community groups involved.

Yet for something as important as the borough's Community Safety Strategy, apparently we're supposed to make do with:

“People shared...”

Come on.

WHO EXACTLY WAS CONSULTED?

This becomes even more interesting when you look at Sandwell's own description of the Safer Sandwell Partnership.

The Council says it is supported by organisations including:

- Neighbourhood Watch groups;

- Independent Advisory Group volunteers;

- Sandwell Crime Prevention Panel;

- tenants' and residents' associations.

Excellent.

So surely they were central to developing the new strategy?

Were they?

Did Sandwell's Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinator submit a response?

How many individual Neighbourhood Watch schemes were contacted?

Was the Sandwell Police Independent Advisory Group formally consulted?

Was the Sandwell Crime Prevention Panel asked for its views?

Were StreetWatch volunteers involved?

Which tenants' and residents' associations were contacted?

Which Friends groups?

Which community organisations?

Which faith organisations?

Which disability organisations?

Which groups representing older people?

Which youth organisations?

Which businesses?

Where is the list?

If they were involved, great.

Publish it.

If they weren't, perhaps somebody might explain why organisations that Sandwell itself says support its Community Safety Partnership weren't at the heart of consulting on its Community Safety Strategy.

COMMUNITY SAFETY OR COMMUNITY BROADCASTING?

The August Community Safety Bulletin is actually packed with information.

There's quite a bit in it that is genuinely useful.

But there is a recurring theme.

Report this.

Tell the council that.

Call the police.

Send your CCTV footage.

Keep an evidence diary.

Look after your property.

All sensible enough.

But there's much less about how ordinary residents actually become part of community safety.

Where's the big section saying:

JOIN YOUR LOCAL NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH

START A NEW WATCH SCHEME

JOIN STREETWATCH

APPLY TO JOIN THE POLICE IAG

GET INVOLVED WITH THE CRIME PREVENTION PANEL

MEET YOUR LOCAL PCSO

ATTEND A COMMUNITY SAFETY MEETING

HELP SET LOCAL POLICING PRIORITIES

That's community involvement.

Community safety shouldn't just mean:

“Something's gone wrong – please report it.”

It should also mean:

“Come and help prevent it happening in the first place.”

NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH – HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

This is perhaps the strangest omission.

Neighbourhood Watch is still operating in Sandwell.

There is a Sandwell Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinator.

There are current events.

Neighbourhood Watch has even been involved in Sandwell's own Safer 6 programme.

So why isn't it being heavily promoted through every Community Safety Bulletin?

Imagine the usefulness of a permanent section giving residents:

- their local Watch contact;

- information on joining;

- information on establishing a new scheme;

- details of local meetings;

- links to their neighbourhood policing team.

Instead, residents could read page after page of community-safety material without really understanding that there are ways for them to become directly involved.

THE POLICE IAG

There's also a Sandwell Independent Advisory Group.

The IAG is supposed to provide independent community advice to West Midlands Police.

That is potentially a very important bridge between residents and policing.

So why isn't recruitment to it permanently advertised?

How many people sit on it?

Which parts of Sandwell do they represent?

How are members recruited?

How representative is it?

And crucially:

What input did the Sandwell IAG have into the new Community Safety Strategy?

Again, if the answer is “lots”, fantastic.

Show us.

THE CRIME PREVENTION PANEL

Then there's the Sandwell Crime Prevention Panel.

Sandwell Council itself lists it as a voluntary organisation involving the public in crime prevention.

Sandwell's own partnership material says the Panel supports the Community Safety Partnership.

Yet your average resident could probably read the entire Community Safety Bulletin and never realise it exists.

Why?

This is exactly the sort of independent voluntary body that should be encouraged, promoted and connected directly into local communities.

Not hidden three menus deep on a council website.

CONSULTATION SHOULDN'T JUST MEAN PUTTING A FORM ONLINE

This is another important point.

Putting an online survey on the Council's Consultation Hub is not the same thing as proving that you've reached Sandwell's communities.

Did Sandwell go into libraries?

Community centres?

Neighbourhood Watch meetings?

Residents' associations?

Mosques?

Churches?

Schools?

Colleges?

High-rise blocks?

Older people's groups?

Disability organisations?

Markets?

Town centres?

Did they provide paper copies?

Did officers actually go out and speak to people who wouldn't dream of visiting Sandwell Council's Consultation Hub?

Because there are tens of thousands of Sandwell residents who are never going to spend an evening browsing Citizen Space looking for surveys.

If engagement is dominated by organisations already inside the system, we risk hearing from the same people over and over again.

Then everyone congratulates themselves for having “consulted the community”.

AND THEN THERE'S THE DELAY

The consultation closed on 3 October 2025.

The public feedback page was updated on 29 May 2026.

Nearly eight months later.

Why?

If somebody takes the trouble to participate in a consultation, surely one of the most basic principles of engagement is telling them reasonably quickly what happened.

Otherwise residents eventually reach the conclusion that filling in consultations is simply another method of feeding comments into a large municipal black hole.

DON'T TELL US YOU CONSULTED – SHOW US

The new Community Safety Strategy 2026–2030 is heading towards Cabinet in September.

And before councillors wave it through, I'd like to see the evidence behind the consultation.

Not a paragraph saying residents were engaged.

Not another infographic.

Not another photograph of a partnership meeting.

The evidence.

How many responses?

Who responded?

Where were they from?

Which groups took part?

Which groups were invited?

What did they say?

What recommendations were made?

What was rejected?

What was accepted?

And most importantly:

WHAT ACTUALLY CHANGED BECAUSE THE PUBLIC SPOKE?

Because that is the difference between consultation and consultation theatre.

COMMUNITY SAFETY SHOULD BELONG TO THE COMMUNITY

There's an enormous amount of goodwill sitting in Sandwell's communities.

Residents who know exactly where the problems are.

Neighbourhood Watch volunteers.

StreetWatch.

Residents' groups.

Friends groups.

Crime-prevention volunteers.

Businesses.

Faith groups.

Young people.

Older residents.

People who have lived in the same neighbourhood for 40 years and know more about what happens on their street than anybody sitting behind a desk in Oldbury.

Use them.

Listen to them.

Help them organise.

Give them a genuine route into decision-making.

And then publish what happened as a result.

The slogan in Sandwell's Community Safety Bulletin is:

“Building a safer community together.”

Good slogan.

Now let's make the word “together” actually mean something.

Because community safety shouldn't be something done to communities, or even merely done for communities.

It should be something done with them.

And before Sandwell's shiny new four-year strategy gets approved, somebody needs to answer one very simple question:

HOW MANY PEOPLE ACTUALLY HELPED WRITE THE STORY SANDWELL IS NOW TELLING US?

I'll be watching the September Cabinet papers very carefully.

And I'll update this when Sandwell provides the missing answers.

#Sandwell #SandwellCouncil #CommunitySafety #SaferSandwell #NeighbourhoodWatch #WestMidlandsPolice #SandwellPolice #CommunityEngagement #PublicConsultation #ASB #CrimePrevention #StreetWatch #Safer6 #LocalDemocracy #CouncilTransparency #SandwellCommunitySafety #CommunitySafetyStrategy

Child abuse figures in Sandwell: the “missing years” aren’t missing — they’re just inconvenient

Child abuse figures in Sandwell: the “missing years” aren’t missing — they’re just inconvenient

If you read my last blog on Sandwell’s child abuse figures, you’ll remember the key issue: data continuity.

We had police-recorded child-abuse-related crime figures for Sandwell (2021–2024) — and a big gap for 2012–2020, which matters because that’s the era linked to the widely reported “6,226 allegations” figure (2012–2016).

At the time, West Midlands Police told us older data wasn’t available due to “system changes/issues”.

Since then, there’s been an update — and it changes the story significantly.

This update is about what has now been admitted, what is still being withheld in practice, and why selective political language at Sandwell Council doesn’t cut it.

1) What’s new: the data isn’t “not available” — it’s held, archived, and accessible in principle

West Midlands Police have now stated (in response to our follow-up FOI) that:

• “Crimes” is a legacy system
• Historical data is archived in a central database
• They store and have access to individual data lines
• They are developing applications to access it

So, let’s be plain:

The pre-2021 data is not “gone”.
It is held.

But…

2) The new barrier: “We could, but it would take more than 18 hours”

West Midlands Police say it is possible to build a search to retrieve what we asked for — but it would exceed 18 hours and therefore they are relying on FOIA section 12 (cost limit) to refuse.

They also say they can’t provide even aggregate totals until their application is “tested”.

So the position has shifted from:

“Not available”

to

“Held, but not retrievable within FOI time limits (right now)”

That matters, because it turns this from a “technical loss” story into a governance and transparency story.

If you can access the data lines, you can’t credibly pretend the years don’t exist — you can only argue about cost and effort.

And FOI law doesn’t allow public bodies to just shrug and walk away at that point.

3) The problem WMP now have: duty to help you narrow the request

When a public body relies on section 12, it also has a duty to advise and assist under FOI (section 16).

That means they should be offering practical options, such as:

• “We can do 2012–2016 only”
• “We can do one offence category only”
• “We can provide force-wide totals, if LPA breakdown is hard”
• “We can do two years at a time”

Instead, the response amounts to:
“Come back later, once our application is developed.”

That’s not transparency. That’s a holding pattern.

So the next step is already underway: internal review, and narrowed FOIs designed to test what is genuinely retrievable within the cost limit.

4) Why this matters in Sandwell specifically

Because Sandwell has a historic figure hanging over it — the widely reported 6,226 allegations (2012–2016).

If we can’t access consistent historic police data to compare with recent years, the public cannot:

• understand long-term trends
• assess whether safeguarding demand has changed
• test whether political “commitments” match reality
• track whether lessons were learned or quietly dropped

Data gaps aren’t just technical issues.
They become accountability gaps.

5) Meanwhile at Sandwell Council: big words, selective naming

Now for the part that should make anyone with a straight face slightly uncomfortable.

Police disclosures for 2021–2024 show hundreds of sexual offences against children each year in Sandwell.

And yet, at the most recent full council meeting, Labour’s safeguarding language has been carefully general.

Child abuse is mentioned in broad terms.
But Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) is not explicitly named.

That matters because:

• CSE is not “optional” safeguarding
• it’s not a footnote
• and historically, failure to name it clearly is how institutions end up “managing reputations” rather than managing risk

If your politics can’t name the risk plainly, it’s not safeguarding leadership — it’s comms management.

That’s not a legal allegation of motive.
It’s a political judgement based on what is — and isn’t — being said on the record.

6) What happens next

Here is what we are doing now:

1. Internal review of the latest WMP response, asking:

   • why older data was first described as “not available” when it is held
   • what narrowed request would be answerable within the cost limit
   • whether any existing aggregate reports / returns exist

2. New narrowed FOIs aimed at:

   • 2012–2016 only
   • or one offence group only
   • or a two-year slice (to test feasibility)

3. Continuing FOIs to Sandwell bodies to pin down:

   • what the 6,226 figure actually counted
   • what definitions were used
   • and what the updated series looks like, year by year

7) The simplest point of all

If you can say:

• “We hold it”
• “It’s archived”
• “We can access the data lines”

then the public is entitled to ask:

Why can’t you provide even basic historic totals — and what exactly needs to happen before you can?

Because safeguarding isn’t a PR campaign.
And child abuse figures aren’t something you “pause” until the software catches up.

#Sandwell #Safeguarding #ChildProtection #CSE #ChildSexualExploitation #FOI #Transparency #Accountability #WestMidlandsPolice #DataGovernance