Welcome to the Guide

Welcome to the Guide to Community Engagement. The Guide, and the database of effective practice which supports it, was originally developed by the National Practitioner Panel for Community Engagement in Policing. Both the Guide and the database contain contributions from, and have been road tested by, a wide range of practitioners from police forces and police authorities across the country. 

This Guide has been developed as a resource for a cross section of policing practitioners. Whether you are brand new to community engagement and need strategic and practical advice to develop or undertake a programme of activity, or whether you are familiar with many of the issues and are simply looking for hints or tips, we are sure that you will find the practical help, advice and examples contained in this product helpful.

Since the group was formed in late 2003, with the aim to identify and promote effective community engagement practice and share it with other policing practitioners. The Panel comprised practitioners with a range of expertise and skills, drawn from police forces and authorities across the country, all with a commitment to ensuring that the police service can engage successfully with the communities they serve.

A great deal of effective work has been ongoing in a number of forces and authorities across the country for some time - and as a group they focused on collectively gathering material and effective practice in order to provide help, guidance and support to those with a community engagement role.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to community engagement and, consequently, this Guide does not provide you with a single, prescriptive method. Local methods of engaging communities need to be appropriately tailored to - and reflect the mix of - the communities you are trying to reach, and this Guide is designed to help practitioners to understand and implement what will work best in their own areas.

This Guide is a living document and it needs to grow and develop to keep it fresh and relevant to users. We need your help, input and commitment to achieve this and welcome your comments, contributions and examples of effective practice for the community engagement database. We hope that through collaborative working - and colleagues sharing their experiences of what is working - we can achieve the goal of engaged and supported communities.

Purpose of the Guide

This Guide to Community Engagement in Policing is intended as a resource for a range of policing practitioners seeking information about how they can involve the public more effectively in their decision-making and service delivery and, ultimately, improve community engagement within their localities. It includes detailed and practical advice on, and tools for, delivering effective community engagement and is supported by a database listing initiatives from a wide range of localities across the country.  The Guide also contains links to relevant websites for further information.