The Government has set every force a target to raise public confidence that the police and local council are dealing with the anti-social behaviour and crime issues that matter locally.

This is now the only target to be set for individual forces and is monitored by the Home Office using the British Crime Survey (BCS). Suffolk’s target is to reach 62.9% by 2012 and by this measurement, performance for the rolling year to September 2009 was 46.3%.

The BCS measures confidence across force areas as a whole. To supplement this information the Home Office has required police forces  to carry out local surveys – and the results from these surveys help the police and their partners identify local variations in confidence.

The latest results from these local surveys are shown below.  The surveys were conducted by an independent research company, which asked people whether they agree that:

“The police and local council are dealing with the anti-social behaviour and crime issues that matter in this area.”

*Babergh   58.8%

*Forest Heath  64.3%

*Ipswich  60%

*Mid Suffolk   61.6%

*St Edmundsbury  64%

*Suffolk Coastal  61.8%

*Waveney   62%

This is just one of a series of questions asked by the surveys. To see the full results, please click on the following link: Results 38kb (pdf) - opens in a new window.

Each survey is conducted by telephone, based on a random sample of people in the local area. The use of a random sample aims to ensure the results are statistically representative of the local population. Compared to other estimates of how the population is made up, the sample for this survey may under-represent some subgroups.