Award winning watchdog

APA Chairman Rob Garnham, GMPA Vice Chairwoman Gloria Oates, GMPA Chairman Cllr Paul Murphy, GMPA staff officers Anna Cordwell and Lisa Hindle and Rob Watts from Northgate Public Services

Greater Manchester Police Authority (GMPA) has scooped a national award for an innovative community engagement project with young people.

The Authority fought off competition from police authorities in Avon and Somerset, West Midlands and West Yorkshire to secure the accolade from the Association of Police Authorities (APA).

GMPA Chairman Cllr Paul Murphy said: “The Authority was short-listed in all three award categories.

“That’s a fantastic achievement in itself. To go on and be picked as a final winner in one of them is the icing on the cake.”

It’s the second year the APA has staged its Recognising Excellence Awards and for the second year running, GMPA was the only police authority to be short-listed in all three categories.

The three categories are Innovation, Collaboration and Community Engagement and police authorities from across the country are invited to put themselves forward for an award.

GMPA’s knife crime project called What’s the Point? impressed judges the most in the engagement area and representatives from the Authority picked up the award at a ceremony in Nottingham.

What’s the Point? featured a series of seminars delivered in schools, colleges, young offenders’ institutes and prisons.

Their aim was to raise awareness of the national strategy to tackle knife crime at the same time as gathering views on the scale of the knife crime problem.

The sessions also highlighted the consequences for people carrying knives and addressed the issues that may be faced by people who go on to use or carry knives.

All of the information captured during the sessions is being used as part of an educational DVD resource to be launched in 2010.