Neighbourhood Watch is one of the biggest and most successful crime prevention schemes ever. It is based on simple ideas and values shared by many people around the country - of getting together with neighbours to minimise local crime and disorder and to make one's own neighbourhood a safer and better place to live.

Police Community Support Officer

Our local Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) is Matt Farley and his number is 07772 226188.
Calls to the police for non-emergency matters can be made on 101.

We are fortunate in St Stephens to have experienced a low incidence of crime and “un-neighbourly” behaviour – long may this continue. Nonetheless, we should maintain a reasonable degree of vigilance to protect ourselves and our community from criminal or disreputable elements and, indeed, traders and others whose activities, merchandise or services are most certainly not in residents’ best interests.

Our Scheme is a registered member of The Neighbourhood and Home Watch Network (England & Wales) from whom bulletins are received on matters of general concern. We are also members of The Canterbury & District Neighbourhood Watch Scheme whose newsletters give news and advice on a local basis. In addition, we receive very frequent email messages from Kent Police via the Kent Community Messaging Service (KCMS) which give up-to-the-minute news of criminal activity in East Kent and also from Kent Trading Standards (KCCTS) providing information about “dodgy” traders and how they try to profit from you. You can see, therefore, that there is a degree of vigilance exercised on your behalf, perhaps without your knowing it, and in our newsletters we have aimed to let you know some of the tricks which might catch out the unwary.

We would now like to develop a better means of communication with you rather than relying on periodic newsletters and we should like as many residents as possible to subscribe to our email address list. If we do not presently have your email address, please let us have it so that we can “keep you in the loop”.

Finally, we should like to bring Crime Stoppers to your attention. Whereas your identity is revealed if you make a 999 call to the police, should you wish to remain anonymous for justifiable reasons, you may call Crime Stoppers on 0800 555 111 to pass information on actual or potential crime which will then be passed to the police for action. Crime Stoppers is an independent charity set up nationwide by Lord Ashcroft 25 years ago, just after the murder of PC Keith Blakelock during the Broadwater Farm riots. The phone number is manned 24/7 and charitable status guarantees anonymity for all callers. More information is available at the Crimestoppers website.

If you want more information on any aspect of our Neighbourhood Watch Scheme, please contact us via the form displayed under “Contact” elsewhere on this website.

Both the St.Stephen's Resident's Neighbourhood Watch and Canterbury & District Neighbourhood Watch schemes produce and distribute regular newsletters of events and items of interest. We also receive other occasional newsletter and leaflets on related Neighbourhood Watch and home security matters from Kent Police.
Listed here are links to recent issues of all of these.