Euro 2016 - enjoy it and remain safe

If like me you are not a football fan you may stop reading here but I hope not. I am hoping that you will be interested in hearing about how the police and our partners in the Safer Peterborough Partnership (SPP) have been and are working together to ensure that the Euro’s is appropriately policed and that the public can enjoy it and remain safe.

Peterborough is a culturally diverse city with residents originating from a wide range of mainland European countries, many of which are taking part in the tournament - including Portugal, Slovakia, Poland, Italy and Czech Republic.

Add to this the indigenous population and a worldwide passion for football, there was a clear need for Peterborough to be prepared for what can happen before, during and after matches are played.

Our planning began way back in January when representatives from the Road Safety Unit, Youth Team, Hate crime, Cohesion, Community Connectors, fire, licensing and police got together.

We identified that, as a city, we needed to plan effectively for this event, ensuring we were doing a number of things -including securing intelligence about where across the city matches would be shown to large audiences e.g. public houses.

This was where the Police and Crime Commissioner and Police Licensing Teams came in. They work together throughout the year and, amongst other things, make sure licensed premises are managed appropriately and any anti-social behavior or public nuisance, attributed to such premises, is investigated and if necessary have their licence revoked.

We identified where matches were to be shown on licensed premises and these premises were inspected to ensure that we were not able to foresee any of these sorts of issues - so that those attending to watch the games could do so safely and without disruption to other members of the public.  

As well as this we knew that games will be watched in various community venues, including in people’s homes, so we wanted to ensure that we sent out messages and engaged with the community throughout the city about domestic violence, drink driving (including next morning) and alcohol related issues to help prevent them. I am hoping that you may have heard some of our messages on the radio and seen the poster campaign from the Road Safety Unit and even our messages on Twitter: