Monday, 14 December 2015

Talks to take place on Prevent Strategy with Cllr Butt after Cabinet approval of Stronger Communities Strategy

Cllr Muhammed Butt, Leader of Brent Council, has agreed to meet some of the organisers of Thursday's public meeting on the Prevent Strategy on Tuesday afternoon.

Meanwhile this evening the Cabinet approved the Stronger Communities Strategy of which Prevent forms just one part along with domestic violence, female genital mutilation and gangs.

Introducing the document Cllr James  Denselow (Lead Member  for Stronger Communities) said that diversity was one of Brent's strengths and the Council was instigating a community led approach, based on the Manchester model,  where 'Big Question' events were held to involve the public and voluntary organisations.

The approach was aimed at the twin challenges of preventing terrorism and Islamophobia.  A version of Prevent had begin in Brent in 2011 but now the state of the world was different and the strategy had become a statutory responsibility of local authorities.

If the Government deemed that Brent Council was failing it its Prevent Duty it could take over implementation of Brent in the borough.

A community led approach would mean that 'we would be doing things our way' and would help mainstream Muslims challenge extremism on their own terms.

Michael Pavey reiterated his opposition to the top down version of Prevent coming from the government but said the Stronger Communities Strategy was about much more than Prevent as it also covered domestic violence, female genital mutilation and gangs.

Cllr Denselow in response to a question from Cllr Roxanne Mashari replied that they would work with young people through schools using a non-traditional approach and that he would discuss with Brent Safer Neighbourhood Teams the recording of hate crime, including those aimed at Muslims.

The Stronger Communities Strategy report is HERE

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wonder if the Council's own actions towards Rosemarie Clarke will be recorded as a hate crime?

Alison Hopkins said...

Anyone read the utter gibberish spouted by Denselow?

"The strategy looks to set up a series of big question events using the models we have learnt. We can hope to form community action groups and Brent multi-faith forums to provide the pathways to engage a cohesion of resilience."

Pardon me, but WTF does that actually MEAN?

Anonymous said...

all the gear and no idea

Anonymous said...

It means 'I have no faith in what I'm saying, I'm not sure what it means, and if I did know I'm not sure I'd be able to articulate it so I'm going to use some words I've heard used by world-class bullshitters and hope this gives me the gravitas I'm desperate to achieve'.

Mike Hine