Getting people back into our town and city centres is a key focus as we recovery from covid-19, we have some amazing independents as well as many well-known names in our city centre. However, lack of community safety is sometimes cited as a reason for people being concerned about shopping in the city centre. However, a recent successful bid to the Safer Streets fund means over £400k worth of community safety improvements will be coming to the city centre shortly.
The bid - which brings together Staffordshire Police, Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Staffordshire Police & Crime Commissioner along with the City Centre BID - follows a previous successful bid to Safer Streets that saw improvements around Fenton and Northwood. This bid for the city centre will deliver a number of improvements, including increasing the number of CCTV cameras in the city centre and also introducing a number of alley gates in locations which would reduce access and/or help provide safe passage for business owners,
As well as coverage in the local media, such as the Sentinel, I also did a FacebookLive on location to highlight the improvements and discuss with key partners.
