Frequently asked questions

 A: To join an existing Neighbourhood Watch scheme please follow this link: Find my Local Scheme. Guidance on setting up a Neighbourhood Watch scheme can be found here.

A: To see if there is a scheme in your local area, please enter your postcode on our main page. If there is no scheme covering your road, consider setting one up.

A: We use Neighbourhood Alert, a government accredited, highly secure, GDPR compliant, system to store your details. If you have any technical queries contact them on  support@neighbourhoodalert.co.uk.

Some Neighbourhood Watch schemes do become inactive. If a Neighbourhood Watch group is ready to close or has had no activity for many months, how the scheme is delivered needs to be reconsidered and may benefit from working with other community groups in the area.

First, contact Central Support Team and ask them to check what happened to the previous Coordinator – they may have moved on or had to stop running the scheme for personal reasons. 

Then, you should try to establish what the scheme had hoped to achieve when it was set up – using the same four questions as if you are setting up a whole new scheme:

• When the scheme was first set up, what were the expectations – what did people hope to gain from the scheme?
• What activities were there to support the scheme?
• What were the commitments in terms of time, resources and finance?
• Were your activities and commitments enough to meet the expectations you agreed on?

Having listed these expectations, activities and commitments, the next stage is to look at each item and ask: ‘Did the scheme achieve this or not? If not, what can be done differently this time?’

Also, try to think of the good things that were achieved and work out how you can build on them to relaunch the scheme.

Top tips…

• Changing the image: While you obviously need to keep the title ‘Neighbourhood Watch’, you could slightly expand the scheme’s area and alter its name, even if it covers virtually the same area. You can also change the image by altering the design of your newsletter or publicity material. You could consider setting up a website or social media channel.
• Timing: When you consider the timing of your relaunch, try to take advantage of local events and align this with local priorities or deliver the launch along with other local community partners.
• Keeping it going: Keep checking that you are still on course to achieve your objectives. Consider reviewing your position every three months, at least in the initial stages.

A: Every geographical area has a different policy to verify or approve their local schemes. There are three possible systems; self-verification, verification by area representative, or police verification. Contact your area representative to find out the policy in your area.

A. Anyone can register a scheme with us, naming themselves as the coordinator. However, some of these schemes might not be known or recognised locally. To reflect this, all schemes are shown as ‘self-declared’ until such time as they are approved by a Neighbourhood Watch and/or police administrator.

A. Schemes aren’t approved by the Central Support Team, because they don’t have the local specific knowledge to determine whether a scheme is legitimate or not. Schemes are approved by local Neighbourhood Watch volunteers who have been trained to administer their section of the database and have knowledge of local procedures for approving schemes, which differ from one part of the country to another.

However, local volunteers have not yet come forward to cover all parts of England and Wales. This means that in some areas, all schemes appear as ‘self-declared’ because there is no administrator in place to verify them. If self-declared schemes didn’t appear on the map at all, it would be unfair on schemes which fall within those areas.

A. No, it just means that no Neighbourhood Watch Administrator or police member has been able to vouch for them. This might be for several reasons:

• They aren’t a legitimate scheme, so have not been verified on the system.
• There is no volunteer Neighbourhood Watch or police administrator covering their area.
• The coordinator has only registered the scheme recently, and the local Neighbourhood Watch administrator hasn’t approved them yet due to the short timescale.

A. Central Support Team won’t mark schemes as ‘verified’, because it is inappropriate for that decision to be made at a national level. Schemes need to be approved locally, and the criteria for them appearing as ‘verified’ may also differ depending on the area where they are located. Central Support Team can put you in touch with the database administrator who covers your area, and they can make the decision as to whether to verify the schemes in question.

If none of the schemes in your area are appearing as ‘verified’, it is possible that your area is not covered by a local volunteer administrator. In that case, you might want to enquire about becoming an administrator yourself. This would mean that you could verify the schemes within your ‘patch’. Contact your Association Representative to find out more. 

A. The Register of Neighbourhood Watch schemes, which populates the postcode search, is held on a piece of software called Neighbourhood Alert. At present 20 police force areas out of the 43 in England and Wales hold a licence to use Neighbourhood Alert, with more to come on board shortly. Only police staff in areas that hold a licence can verify schemes on the system.

A. We have a set of national guidelines that all our members are expected to abide by. We take inappropriate behaviour seriously and advise that anyone breaching these guidelines should not be recognised as a scheme coordinator, either locally or nationally.

We have a network of Neighbourhood Watch volunteers, who work closely with the Associations, from whom we take guidance when determining whether a scheme is suitable to be displayed on the postcode search. If we are advised that a coordinator is breaching the guidelines or that a scheme is not functioning as a Neighbourhood Watch scheme, Central Support Team will remove the scheme from the postcode search. We may also remove the coordinator from the database altogether, depending on the individual circumstances.

Your local area page will have details of this. Find your local area page here.

A: We have area representatives covering large geographical areas.  You can find your local representative here.

A:

• Call 101 to report non-emergency incidents to your local Police force
• Call 999 if:
  • you’re reporting a crime that’s in progress,
  • there is a likelihood of the offender being apprehended if police officers respond immediately, or
  • someone is in immediate danger.
• Call Crimestoppers on 0800 555111 to report crime completely anonymously.
• Call Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 or report it online at www.actionfraud.police.uk to report all incidents of fraud.

A: Your Association representative will be able to supply stickers, signs and leaflets. Find your local area here. For more information see our Resources page.