7. Sut mae Llywodraeth Cymru'n gweithio gyda Chomisiynydd Heddlu a Throsedd Gogledd Cymru i leihau troseddu ac ymddygiad gwrthgymdeithasol ar draws Gogledd Cymru? OQ58499

Thank you for the question. We are committed to working in partnership to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour in north Wales. While policing is currently a reserved matter, we work closely with policing colleagues on strategic issues and fund 600 police community support officers to protect communities across Wales.

Thank you for your response, Minister. I'm sure that you would agree with me that one of the best ways of reducing crime and anti-social behaviour is to ensure that our hard-working police officers and PCSOs that you mentioned are able to fully focus their time and efforts on their very clear areas of responsibility. Minister, you'll recall, back in July, I raised the issue that police forces are facing across Wales at the moment of often being distracted from their clear priorities and focus as police officers to have to deal with work that usually sits in other public service areas, such as in health or in social services. Back in July, you stated that many of these issues are being raised through the policing partnership board whilst working with policing colleagues. So, in light of this, Minister, I was wondering whether you have an update on what efforts are being made to reduce police time having to focus on non-policing issues to enable them and allow them to focus on reducing crime and anti-social behaviour.

Thank you, Sam Rowlands. As you say, PCSOs play such a crucial role in promoting community safety and tackling anti-social behaviour and acting as ears and eyes on the ground for police forces. But it's also about local relationships and so many of those local relationships are with local authorities, with their social services, housing, youth workers et cetera, as well as with health colleagues. It is very interrelated in terms of tackling crime, preventing crime and engaging in a holistic way, which we do with our policing partnership board and with the work that we do with our police and crime commissioners.

So, at the last meeting, for example, we had Lynne Neagle speaking about substance misuse, which is a crucial issue that health, of course, is involved in; public health was there. We also did have the Secretary of State for Wales; Sir Robert Buckland joined us at that meeting and he engaged as well. We take a public health approach in terms of trying to ensure that we have community safety and community cohesion, so it's about interaction, diversionary schemes. You'll be very interested to hear that the police and crime commissioner funded a boxing club in Buckley, a safe location, diversion, interaction scheme. So, it's not about saying less on liaising with health and social services; it's actually engaging for a purpose. But, obviously, that's something that we regularly discuss at that board.