Hello again and thanks for taking the time to read this weekly update!

Did you know that during the past year there have been have been a total of 1211 crimes recorded on Selly Oak as a Ward, of those, 185 victims (15%) gave their occupation as Student – although this does not mean they were solely students at Birmingham Uni – this includes school pupils and any other person in education.

It’s been another really busy week working with our partners to make Selly Oak a safer place to live, work and study. This week we chaired the regular Student Serious Acquisitive Crime meeting at the Guild of Students, University of Birmingham. This meeting has proved to be invaluable in our efforts to co-ordinate our activities both on and off the Campus and work together with The Guild of Students, Birmingham City Council, Accommodation Services, University Security, Bournbrook Community Safety Partnership and of course our colleagues responsible for Policing the Campus, Edgbaston and Economic Crime.

We also held our Community Tasking meeting at the Kensington Hotel, Pershore Road – really good to see so many residents (including our local Councillor Karen McCarthy and student representatives) at what was a really productive meeting. We listened to your concern, take all reports of crime seriously and will do our very best to tackle your number one issue – Robbery.

In other news we have a new team member joining us on Sunday morning when we are back on duty – PCSO Wayne Lawrence starts with the team after Policing the Northfield area for a number of years – he brings with him a wealth of knowledge and experience and will be a real asset to us at this busy time.

Look out for our press release with updates on the current Robbery issue and please call us wherever you live on the Ward should you see or hear of any suspicious behaviour.

Next Week – Anti-Social Behaviour Warnings Explained!

~Sergeant Williams, Selly Oak Neighbourhood Team