A NEW initiative has been launched to help local residents report and resolve community safety issues.
Spearheaded by the Upper Springfield Development Trust (USDT), the West Belfast Community Safety Team will support residents in reporting crime and liaising with statutory bodies to improve safety in the area.
The team, which is funded the Housing Executive and the West Belfast Policing and Community Safety Partnership (PCSP), held its first public engagement at the Kennedy Centre on Monday.
Commenting on the initiative, USDT Development Coordinator, Cllr Michael Donnelly, said: "It's great that we now have two community safety workers covering the length and breadth of West Belfast. One will cover the Greater Falls and Upper Springfield and another will cover the Upper Falls and the Colin area.
"It's about supporting residents to report incidents of crime, liaising with statutory bodies, and working to resolve community safety issues.
"We know that there is an issue of under-reporting in West Belfast for a multitude of different reasons. The safety workers will be a conduit between the community and the statutory world. Their numbers are available, we want people to contact them, and they'll be doing surgeries throughout West Belfast that the community can avail of. Hopefully it will be beneficial and make a real impact."
"We want this team to be the early intervention," he added.
"In an ideal world people would report crime themselves, but we know there are barriers to that, but this will remove that barrier and people in our community will feel more comfortable reporting incidents of crime."
If you have an issue to discuss with the West Belfast Community Safety Team, contact Dee Donnelly on 07485394477, or Aisling Heath on 07485394478.
