Rationale: Banyule is a safe city with overall high levels of perception of safety across age groups. However, issues (and media reports of) including cybercrime, gangs, drugs and home invasions can heighten levels of concern and this may limit people’s sense of confidence to participate in community life with older residents one of the main cohorts most affected by these concerns.

Rationale: Place management is an effective mechanism for bringing stakeholders together to address issues of safety, access and equity and amenity to areas that have location based issues. Banyule Council supports place based responses.

Rationale: Quality spaces invite people into the place and encourage active use of it. Communities that use public spaces with confidence increase community confidence and reduce opportunity for potential offenders to engage in criminal acts and/or anti- social behaviour.

Rationale: Banyule’s recorded offence rates are consistently lower than Victorian rates. The community’s perceptions and experience of safety can be different from official offence rates. Building strong partnerships with law enforcement and local community groups provides an important opportunity for Council to share information, identify strategies and influence policy.

Rationale: Community safety can be a fluid environment that is required to respond to major social policy change environments. This has been seen with the 2009 Victorian Bushfires and currently with the Royal Commission into Family Violence recommendations and policy. Emerging imperatives bring a range of challenges in addressing resourcing and support requirements from Council until policy becomes mainstream and embedded into legislation, strategy and policy. A major current focus is Family Violence, with incidents in Banyule accounting for slightly over half of all assault incidents and slightly under one half of all sexual offences.