When I started Neighbourhood Watch in 2011, we see a big dip in crime. Police directly paid for the creation of a Neighbourhood Watch Association and were very positive about it. Tower Hamlets Police worked directly with us.
Personally unfortunately I had to stop intense involvement and police dropped the project of pro-actively creating Neighbourhood Watch schemes and turned onto using OWL as automated response to crime.
We are now struggling to get police to even support us. It took a year of intense negotiations to get police to even mention us on their SNT newsletter, by putting our yellow Neighbourhood Watch logo there.
Neighbourhood Watch is about whole communities getting involved in a range of activities to keep crime and ASB out and make life better for all involved.
Having recently spoken to MOPAC and local police it is impossible for one Police area to join Neighbourhood Alert / Ourwatch, it has to be a joined effort for price and logistics reasons.
We want to see Neighbourhood Watch being a staple diet of all housing providers in the borough and support it by default instead of having to convince people to take part because they do not know about it as part of the housing strategy.
Since police ditched communal involvement with scheme creation directly we see IAGs and Gold groups to advise them on strategy, which involves a very small number of people, most do not know about this. The Met Police business plan hardly mentions Neighbourhood Watch as an integral strategy. Police morale has been diminished with station closures and less resources over this period too. Police are now often concerned about time-saving because of officer shortages. But, Neighbourhood Watch is a worth-while investment. Join here
Tower Hamlets Neighbourhood Watch Association 
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