Celebrating 25 years of Essex County Neighbourhood Watch Association
The Essex Neighbourhood Watch Association is celebrating 25 years of helping to make the county safer.
The Association was created in 1995 by its President Geoff Ireland. It now has thousands of volunteers who give up their time to assist in making their communities a safer place by reducing the opportunity of crime.
Clive Stewart, front left, and Jane Gardner with representatives from all of the Essex County Neighbourhood Watch Districts, celebrate 25 years with the cake.
To celebrate this milestone, Deputy Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner Jane Gardner presented the volunteers with a cake as a token ‘thank you’ for all their sterling efforts over the years at a meeting held today at Kelvedon Park.
Since April 2016, Roger Hirst, the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner for Essex, has awarded Essex Neighbourhood Watch £56,386 from his Crime and Disorder Reduction Grant Fund to help with running costs, paying for promotional activities and crime prevention items, producing guides for its 140,000 members (including Neighbourhood Watch Facebook and Twitter users) and supporting the organisation’s annual conferences.
Roger Hirst said: “Neighbourhood Watch do a very important job in communities throughout Essex. Working with the police they help provide intelligence to officers, support the elderly and vulnerable and go out of their way to make their local area safer.
“Just knowing that Neighbourhood Watch are active in an area can play a large part in preventing crime for happening in the first place. The volunteers make a significant contribution towards creating safe and secure communities. Congratulations and thank you on your 25 amazing years!”
Clive Stewart, Essex County Neighbourhood Watch Association’s chairman and secretary, said: “We operate 14 Neighbourhood Watch Districts across Essex and our 140,000 members are all volunteers. We encourage people to come together to make our communities safer and stronger and to look out for each other.
“I’m so proud that there have been Neighbourhood Watch groups for 25 years and really appreciate the support we have from Essex Police and especially the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner.”
To find out more about Neighbourhood Watch and how to get involved go to http://www.essexnwa.co.uk/
You can also email your full name and postal address to [email protected]
