A former police commissioner says positive work is being done in Nottingham after concerns were raised over its reputation as a safe city being “compromised”.
Councillor David Mellen (Lab), who was the leader of Nottingham City Council between 2019 and 2024, said the city’s reputation for safety was being compromised by the Nottingham attacks inquiry.
The judge-led Nottingham Inquiry, which held its first hearing in London on February 23, is examining missed opportunities to intervene with Valdo Calocane before he killed three people and seriously injured three others in a series of attacks on June 13, 2023.
Speaking at a council meeting on Wednesday (March 3), where police and partner operations to make the city safer were discussed, Cllr Mellen asked how damage to the city’s reputation was being addressed.
“Whenever the Nottingham attacks are on the news, our reputation as a city for being safe is compromised, not by anything actually happening, but by the repeat story and people from around the country – perhaps people thinking about their children coming here for university – are mainly put off from coming by that incident, which was terrible,” he said.
“But it isn’t something that happens very often, and that is a good thing.”
Former police and crime commissioner Paddy Tipping, who is now the chairman of the Nottingham Community Safety Partnership, said: “I am confident that we as partners have a coherent story to tell, and a lot of work has been taking place over the last six months to try and identify the headline messages and the narrative we want to give.
“You are right to say this is going to be a difficult period whilst the public inquiry is going on. There will be another 18 months of hard criticism, I think, of some of the things that have happened.
“People are owning up to the mistakes, but we also need to turn the coin over and look at the positive things that are happening in the city. The tremendous example is knife crime: the perception is that knife crime is going up, but the reality is knife crime has come down substantially.”
A separate incident in November last year caused serious concern amongst the Nottingham public, prompting Nottinghamshire Police to declare a critical incident.
A confrontation between two groups – some brandishing machetes – took place outside the Council House in Old Market Square on Sunday, November 16, at the height of the Winter Wonderland Christmas market.
Kylie Davies, the force’s chief inspector, said the critical incident resulted in a significant presence of officers in the city for a number of weeks, including knife crime teams, officers on additional overtime, more neighbourhood officers brought in from other areas, and armed response officers.
“In that period it was a critical incident, we had 201 arrests just in the Old Market Square beat. It was very much a zero-tolerance time,” she said.
Chief Inspector Davies said there has been an 11 per cent reduction in knife-enabled offences in the city centre over the last year, and a 29 per cent reduction in the number of people under 25 being admitted to hospital with knife-related injuries in Nottinghamshire.
Around 47 per cent of recorded knife offences were the result of police action, including stop checks.
Arrests for drug dealing in Old Market Square also increased by 200 per cent compared to the previous year as a result of the operation, and a closure order was secured for the Debenhams building after incidents of anti-social behaviour.
She said the Purple Flag has been awarded again, which is given to cities with a safe night-time economy, and that the force had been working with the two universities to make sure students feel safe.
“We are not 100 per cent there yet and there is always more we can do, and there is a lot more we have planned. But I think we are making good progress,” she added.
