They have always worked closely together, but never before have City of Edinburgh Council staff and Lothian and Borders Police officers actually shared office space on the scale that they are doing now, in Chesser House.

Seventeen police officers from the Safer Communities department of LBP's "A" Division are settling in well to their new workplace after moving inlast month.

With police officers now seated beside key contacts within the Council's Community Safety department, the co-location is regarded as a unique and groundbreaking opportunity to achieve an improved and more efficient integrated service for the people of Edinburgh.

Officers are now working in partnership alongside their Council colleagues who have the same areas of responsibility. These include: Problem Solving Partnerships; crime prevention through environmental design; hate crime; personal safety and antisocial behaviour performance monitoring. Also co-located at Chesser House are police officers involved in drug awareness training and Public Transport Liaison, and a school teacher on secondment to develop a personal safety education programme for secondary schools.

The principal benefits of this co-location of resources are:

• improved information sharing between departments
• greater understanding of each partner's working practices and shared
  best practice
• capacity for ad hoc team/partner meetings
• increased opportunities to plan more joint initiatives
• joint work streams for police and Council colleagues to work together
  on intelligence-lead projects

Examples of joint projects include: research and strategy development into victims of hate crime and bogus caller crime; working with schools to raise awareness of drug and alcohol problems; review of existing Problem Solving Partnerships to ensure best practice is shared and recorded.

Gordon Greenhill, the City of Edinburgh Council's Head of Community Safety, said: "We are delighted to welcome our new police colleagues to Chesser House. This co-location with Services for Communities Community Safety staff will provide tremendous opportunities for better partnership working and will enable us to deliver an enhanced and more efficient service to the people of Edinburgh."

Assistant Chief Constable Neil Richardson, Lothian and Borders Police, said: "I am fully supportive of the co-location and the opportunity this presents to work in closer partnership with council colleagues. I consider that the inter-agency approach is an evolving process which will improve understanding, communication and co-operation between the police, the council and other partners and help us deliver a better service to our communities."

ENDS

CASE STUDY - WORKING TOGETHER: Community Safety policy officer Tracy Millar and police officer Ian Park, who are each other's opposite numbers as liaison officers for Problem Solving Partnerships, share their thoughts on the new co-location arrangements and what it means for their working lives.

Tracy Millar is a policy officer within Community Safety at the City of Edinburgh Council. Her role encompasses liaison with the Problem Solving Partnerships and, on a short term basis, hate crime. She says having her police colleagues sitting only a few feet away has transformed their ability to work closely together. "Now that my police counterparts are literally only a desk away from me, we can get the work done a lot more quickly," she explains. "It's great to be able to have ad hoc informal ten-minute meetings, which is often
all it takes to action something, whereas before you would have had to organise a special meeting just to organise that. I much prefer being able to discuss things face to face, rather than trying to put across what you mean in an email or trying to get hold of your colleague by phone."

Ian Park is Tracy's opposite number as police liaison officer for Problem Solving Partnerships within Lothian and Borders Police "A" Division. His role also covers youth issues. He says moving into Chesser House has made a huge difference to his job. "It makes an awful lot of sense for me to be here. I can just turn around and speak to Tracy in person instead of us trying to phone each other. Each of us knows when the other is about. This co-location means that we will able to start dealing with issues as soon as they arise."