Ashton Police Station establishes a Prevention Hub unit

A prevention hub has been established at Ashton Police Station using a data-driven approach to help reduce crime in the area.

The prevention hub consists of multiple different officers, including hospital officers, school officers, licencing officers, and missing-from-home officers.

PC William Drummond, the hospital liaison officer for Tameside, said: "Community-led intelligence policing is so important in making sure that any of the members of the community feel confident that they can call the police and that they are going to monitor what they are telling us.

“My key message would be to report what you need to and what you can, and we can do the rest.”

Recent prevention strategies have included school officers organising no-knife talks in schools from rappers to help educate the students, making sure hospitals are safe from verbal abuse, and making sure pubs are adhering to their licences.

The prevention hub is using a mixture of traditional policing tactics and a data-driven approach, which is helping modernise the way crimes can be prevented.

During these colder months, the police are focusing on locating missing people and preventing burglaries, which increase at this time of year due to the potential high value of Christmas presents.

To prevent the spread of burglaries, the police are reminding people to make sure to lock doors and windows while reporting any suspicious people loitering.