Housing associations back community bid against hate crime

A group of housing associations in Glasgow have joined forces to support a crack down of hate crime across the city.

Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations (GWSFHA) is backing Glasgow Community and Safety Services (GCSS) in their bid to highlight the importance of recording incidents within housing associations across the city to ensure that intervention procedures and resources are effectively utilised.

The Forum met with GCSS’s newly-appointed Hate Crime Policy Officer, Lynn Jolly, who will be speaking with other housing association forum members in the coming weeks to raise awareness of the importance of recording hate crime statistics.

Patricia Gallagher, director of Provanhall Housing Association, explained: “As most housing associations already record and provide statistics with regard to anti-social behaviour incidents, we now hope to work alongside GCSS to make recording these general practice – including those that a victim or witness believes are related to race, homophobia and disability.”

Lynn, who has taken up the post jointly funded by Glasgow City Council and Strathclyde Police, added: “In the last year reports of racism to police have gone down, and it is believed this has been a result of the higher criminal penalties involved.

“We hope by encouraging housing associations to record these statistics, we will be able to paint a more accurate picture of hate crime incidents and highlight the most vulnerable areas which will allow us to target intervention measures and allocation of resources in order to reduce these figures.”
 

Ends

Issued by Beattie Communications on behalf of GWSFHA
For further information please contact:

Joanna Wilson on 01698 787847
joanna.wilson@beattiegroup.com

Kimberley Hamilton 01698 78 78 58
Kimberley.hamilton@beattiegroup.com