Agenda item

SBP PARTNER UPDATE--COMMUNITY SAFETY VERBAL UPDATE ON SUPPORTING THE ELDERLY AND VULNERABLE

Minutes:

It had previously been agreed that different partners from the Safer Bromley Partnership Board would provide updates to the scrutiny committee with respect to the specific priorities of the Safer Bromley Partnership Board. This would mean that going forward, various partners would provide updates and would be scrutinised, whereas before this was just confined to the police. The first of these updates was provided by the Head of Trading Standards and Commercial Regulation.

 

The specific scrutiny question to be addressed was:

 

Crime against the elderly and vulnerable is an area that is tackled under this priority. Can you let us know the action you take, and demonstrate the effectiveness of this, including any return on investment as benefitted by the broader society?

 

This question had been drafted on behalf of the Committee in its role under the Police and Justice Act to challenge and scrutinise the work of Trading Standards in its response to the aims and objectives set out in the Safer Bromley Partnership Strategy. It was the first in a series of questions relating to each of the priorities of the SBP, which would be presented at each of the PP&E PDS meetings going forward.

 

The Head of Trading Standards and Commercial Regulation updated the Committee as follows:

 

Response:

 

The Bromley Community Safety Partnership Strategy has FOUR priorities, one of which is Safer Neighbourhoods, which sets out ambitions to reduce crimes that are deemed by MOPAC, police and residents to be local priorities. This includes reducing crime against the elderly and vulnerable from financial abuse.

 

The Strategy states “This will be achieved by working with all stakeholders to protect older or otherwise vulnerable residents from scams and doorstep crime and targeted communications campaigns and enforcement”. By way of a reminder, the average age of a victim of these crimes is 74, and older people are more likely to be targeted, especially those living alone. We also know loneliness is linked with the deterioration of health and the effects of being defrauded in your own home can be life changing, often leading to a loss of confidence and becoming more susceptible to repeat crime. Becoming a victim of fraud can also lead to depression and withdrawal and this can give rise to additional costs on the health sector.

 

So what action do we take?

 

We work with our partners to raise awareness of scams and doorstep crime. This is important, as its believed that these crimes are grossly under reported.

We have been raising the profile of our work and these crimes for many years in an effort to increase reporting, allowing early intervention and disruption, but more importantly empowering our residents to recognise a scam and protect themselves.

 

We work with professional partners like Social Services and the police, and we attend community groups such as Residents’ Associations and Women’s Institutes. We also work closely with the National Trading Standards Scams Teams, adopting their ‘Friends Against Scams’ campaign as our own.

 

We are re-visiting our colleagues in the Fire Service to help them recognise signs of scams when they visit vulnerable residents to provide fire safety advice.

We monitor the referrals from our partners as it gives us a good indicator about our messaging. These are not one off training sessions. We re-visit banks every year, and we try to get round to all of our contacts at least once every two years.

 

An increase in the number of referrals from Social Services during the pandemic demonstrated a good working relationship with our colleagues in adult services. Before the pandemic we were delivering up to 100 training and awareness sessions each year. The pandemic has obviously prevented much  face to face training but we are picking this up again.

 

In an effort to maintain contact with residents during lockdown, we launched the TS Alert which you should all receive, and we also have a dedicated page on the Bromley Safeguarding Adults Board web site.

 

We have strong branding which will be familiar to all our partners and residents.

 

Interventions, investigations, support & advice:

 

Case study – this is why our Rapid Response Service is so important:

 

In July 2021, we received a call to the Rapid Response Service at 8pm on a Friday night. It came from a neighbour of an elderly couple who had earlier that day been cold called by traders offering to clean their drive and gutters. Once on the roof they claimed to find a number of faults which required urgent repairs, and were quoted £12,000. The Trading Standards response was to attend the victims’ home that evening and take an initial statement, then to liaise with police for support--having established that the traders were due to return the following morning to start the work. The officer attended the address the next morning and with the aid of the police, intervened to stop any work being carried out. One of the individuals who was detained by the police is the subject of an ongoing investigation by our officers.

 

Calls to our Rapid Response Service are important indicators of profile and messaging – prior to the pandemic we were receiving nearly 200 calls a year. This has understandably dropped but we hope to pick this up over the next 2 years.

 

We prosecute when we can. We have to have the right circumstances, as these are often complex investigations, with vulnerable witnesses and perpetrators who are well practiced in the art of avoiding detection.

Case study:

 

We received a call from a bank concerned about an elderly customer making repeat withdrawals which led to an investigation which identified a woman in her 70s, living alone, who had been cold called by two men offering gardening services, who in total took £18,000 from her for work which was valued at £1600. Both men were prosecuted by the team and convicted of fraud offences in July 2021.

 

We currently have a number of significant investigations on-going with 3 trials listed for this year.

 

A big part of our work is around prevention, and also providing advice and support to victims and their families.

 

Case study:

 

Tom is 80 and a victim of carbon credit scams. He has capacity but was targeted by scammers for some time. When we got involved he confessed to handing over an “embarrassingly large amount of money” but the true extent of his loss was kept a secret from his family. During the course of his victimisation, he lost his wife; the scammers used this to strengthen their bond with him. He was unknown to social services but his bank account had previously been flagged, police had been involved but for a long time he refused to believe he was the victim of a scam and continued to respond to demands for payment in order to recover his investments.

 

We fitted a call blocker to his phone and analysis of this device showed he was getting 70 scam calls a week. We also arranged a befriending service through Age UK as he was very lonely, despite having a strong family support network.

After engaging with colleagues from the National Trading Standards Scams Team, we supported the family in writing a letter to his bank to see if they would reimburse his losses. He was eventually refunded a significant sum.

 

Since April, we have received complaints and enquiries about scams with a consumer detriment of around £1.5million.

 

How do we record impacts and outcomes?

 

Outcomes include a number of talks, a number of rapid response calls, and a number of early interventions.

 

The bigger impact is around the wellbeing of the victim. An elderly woman who lost £12,000 of her life savings to rogue traders who tells us ““It felt as if I had burglars in the house and I was a bit scared of what they would do if I said I wasn’t going to write anymore cheques; they might have turned on me” and then goes on to say ““After Trading Standards fitted a camera on my front door, I felt a lot safer. I felt as if I could say ‘No more, I’ve got this now’. That’s an impact.

 

A victim of a scam told us “I’m frightened out of my life, I can’t breathe and I don’t know what I’m doing”.

 

Another victim told us “I am finally writing to update you with the good news that my bank have given me a full refund. I am so very relieved. I just wanted to give you a huge thanks for giving me the much needed moral support through that”.

 

It is believed that there is a link between victims of scams and rogue traders and their future needs for social care. This can result in additional costs themselves and to local authorities. We don’t fully understand how this works but there are some theories.

 

One perspective on this focuses on mental health, capacity and confidence of elderly victims and how criminals exploit that. A resident living independently but with cognitive decline, who might be frail and maybe receiving some support will be at greater risk and vulnerable to being targeted by fraudsters. If this goes unchecked they could become chronic targets and this can have an impact on their finances and their health and in some cases make it impossible to continue to live at home.

 

The work we are doing through early intervention and disruption, for example in providing call-blockers, and advising victims and families in order to prevent or stop victims from responding to scams, can be seen as an alternative to care in some cases, enabling the individual to continue to stay in their home. This can result in financial savings to the victim, family and the Local Authority.

 

The National Trading Standards Team has developed a simple model which allows us to give an estimate of the future financial savings as a result of our work in this area. The calculator is based on financial and non-financial losses, using data from a Home Office ‘Cost of Crime’ Study. The figures are very much an under estimate. Locally we have data evidencing £2.5million of savings to residents as result of trading standards interventions since 2006. Using the new calculator, we can estimate that since April 2021, we have created future financial savings to our residents of £250,000 and healthcare & related quality of life savings of £112,170.

 

The Chairman requested that it be noted in the minutes how much the Council valued the work of the Trading Standards Department.

 

A discussion took place concerning the trading standards alerts and how wide the circulation of those alerts were. The Head of Trading Standards and Commercial Regulation said he did not have a precise figure on the night for the number of recipients of the alerts, but he would look into that and update Members later. He was seeking to increase the number of recipients for the Trading Standards alerts going forward.

 

A Member asked how the Council was doing in terms of recruiting Scam Ambassadors. It was noted that the Portfolio Holder was the latest recruit. Mr Vale responded by saying the success of the team was due to the whole team and to the Trading Standards Manager—Graeme Preston.

 

Members expressed the view that the Trading Standards Department would benefit from more support from the Council’s Communications Department.

 

A discussion took place on how local Bromley businesses could apply to be recognised on the new Trading Standards Approved Trader scheme which was a partnership with Kent County Council Trading Standards.  In this regard it was also noted but there was no liability with respect to the Council. 

 

RESOLVED that the Safer Bromley Partnership scrutiny update from Trading Standards be noted and that the Head of Trading Standards and Commercial Regulation would update the Committee with details of the circulation list for the Trading Standards alerts.