What is Neighbourhood Watch?

Cambridgeshire Neighbourhood Watch is about local people working together to create safer, attractive and friendly places to live, places where crime is less likely to happen and people are less likely to turn to anti-social behaviour.

It’s about you looking out for your neighbours and them looking out for you, crossing barriers of age, race and class for everyone’s good. It’s about making sure that no one need feel alone, scared or vulnerable in the place where they live.

Members join together to form a community group which iscalled a Neighbourhood Watch Scheme. To find out more about setting up your own scheme go to Setting up and running a local scheme

What do the members of a scheme do?

Neighbourhood Watch groups get involved in all kinds of activities. They might help organise home security equipment for the elderly, organise fun events for the young, or help improve the local environment with work like communal gardening. There are more ideas for scheme activities here.

A cluster of schemes

Sometimes it is helpful to set up a cluster of schemes. This is where one scheme would be too large on its own for a single coordinator to a manage and the large scheme can be split into smaller schemes each managed by a single main coordinator but remain joined together with a single area coordinator. This might be helpful where the schemes are in a village or area of a town where the members want the scheme to be part of their street but also want remain connected to other local schemes.

Partnerships with Agencies

Groups often join forces not just with the police, but with many other organisations to make their neighbourhoods more secure and pleasant. The advantage of building links withother organisations is that advice and help is easier to find when you know people. There are examples of partnership working on the Partnership Working pages.

Fund Raising

Being part of a group also makes it much easier to get funding and support for the kinds of things your neighbourhood needs. The Fundraising Guidance pages will support your fund raising with help and suggestions.