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A big thank you to Jim for this one. Here, Jim speaks honestly about his role as a Neighbourhood Sergeant, the fantastic Community Safety Podcast and his new opportunity with RHE Global. 

 “I need an urgent ambulance to the scene asap, 17-year-old male unconscious but breathing knocked over by a car” “The family of the injured male will not let me, or other officers administer first aid”

That was my urgent call to my control room as a neighbourhood sergeant back in November 2014.

This day changed my life, my team were attending a routine call to arrest a prolific teenager for breaching his bail conditions.

I covered the back of the property and two of my officers went inside to effect the arrest. The offender escaped from the address, and I chased him up the garden path. He ran straight in front of a passing car and was hurled 20 feet up in the air and hit his head on the kerb have been thrown several feet across the road.

The above incident changed my life and led to me suffering severe post traumatic stress disorder and mental health issues.

I some how clung onto my police career for a further 2-years, but my mental health was suffering, and I knew I just could not continue.

I still had passion for keeping communities safe and wanted to stay working in this field, but the question was where I go next with my life and career.

In May 2016, a lucky break then came along, when a local housing association advertised for a new Community Safety Manager. I got the job and left the police without any regrets at all, I had served my Queen and Country for over 20 years and would always be proud of my achievements. I worked the next few years learning all about housing and tackling anti-social behaviour in this
environment. It was a steep learning curve, but this experience taught me a lot and prepared me for my next move. 

The one stand out procedure that I implemented during my time in housing was The Noise App and how it transformed how we investigated noise complaints.
In the summer of 2018, a fresh challenge emerged with Stoke-on-Trent City Council as their new Operational Lead for Anti-Social Behaviour. This job also resonated with me because Stoke was my city of birth.

This job was a huge challenge, previously the service had not been managed effectively and the team had a bad reputation amongst council officials and residents.

Over a 4-year period, we all worked hard as a team to provide excellent quality training and direction to the team. Again, the implementation of The Noise App was crucial to helping the team deal more effectively with noise complaints.

During my time in Stoke we reduced anti-social behaviour across the city by 30% and we received some excellent customer feedback.
It was also interesting to analyse the data around noise complaints, prior to using the App it was taking on average 170 days to close a case. I then looked at the data once the App had been fully implemented and the results were staggering, the 170 days had been reduced to 31.

Community Safety is a broad subject with lots of areas associated with it. I want to see communities grow and to be the safest that they can be. Therefore, I started The Community Safety Podcast in early 2021. The podcast interviews key people with the sector and explores how we can all work together and genuinely change things for the better. The podcast has been well received and is now ranked as a top 0.5% podcast across the world.

My new role with RHE Global as their Director of Community Safety is my dream role. I am so passionate about The Noise App and how it helps professionals to tackle noise nuisance and also safeguarding concerns.

I will continue to help develop The Noise App with my RHE colleagues and cannot wait for version 2 of the App to be launched in early 2023. Over the next few months, I will be talking to our customers and prospective customers and
exploring their community safety needs and how we can develop additional products that make communities even safer.

If you need any help or support around The Noise App or other RHE products please email me at jnixon@rheglobal.com or call me on 07496 333474.

I look forward to catching up with you in the near future.

Jim Nixon
Director of Community Safety