Designing out crime

The phrase ‘prevention is better than cure’ has become one of life’s major guiding principles ever since it was first coined by Erasmus back in the 16th century.

It is a principle probably most adopted when considering health issues, but it is also a widely accepted truth when it comes to crime. While crime fighting and detecting are inevitably more attractive subjects for writers of fact and fiction, prevention is the message that the authorities responsible for tackling crime are always most keen to promote.

Wirral Council and Merseyside Police take the ‘designing out crime’ principle to the next level with a formal partnership between developers, local authority planners, crime reduction officers and police architectural liaison officers.

Considering the potential for crime and disorder around major developments is not a new thing and architectural liaison officers have, for a number of years, had an input into planning applications.

However, under the new arrangement every major planning application that is submitted in Wirral will need to include within it a formal, detailed Designing Out Crime document or it will not be valid.

And in order to assist developers with putting together this report, crime reduction and architectural liaison officers will work with them if necessary at the earliest possible stage of design to ensure that due consideration is given to issues around crime and public order.

In this way, these issues of great importance to the community are considered very early on in the development process and for the developers the benefit is that there is a greater likelihood of their schemes meeting the requirements of the planning committee at the first time of asking.