The leader of Enfield Council has said it will work together with community groups to solve the problem, reports Grace Howarth, Local Democracy Reporter

The leader of Enfield Council has blamed the ease with which knives can be bought online and young people’s “fear” for a big rise in knife crime locally.

At an overview and scrutiny committee on Wednesday (20th) Ergin Erbil gave an update on the extensive work taking place to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour in the borough amid the large increase in recorded knife crime.

A report presented to the committee contained the latest crime data for the borough during the year ending September, including a 20.8% rise of knife crime with injury offences, although it added there had been a “continuous reduction between April and September”.

A 9.9% increase in robbery of personal property was recorded during the same period, but more positively there was a 4.8% fall in violent offences as a whole and a 11.7% decrease in domestic abuse incidents specifically. Antisocial behaviour was also down 4.7%.

Cllr Erbil explained the council was taking a holistic approach to cutting crime. He said: “Over the past 14 years the police and other public services have been underfunded, so they are ill-equipped to deal with some of the issues we are seeing.

“We’ve got voluntary groups working day in, day out, we’ve got public services who are ill-equipped, and we’ve got parents and schools who are scared to speak out.

“What we have to do as a key partner in all of this is to bring them all together, which is what we’ve been doing.”

Expanding on some of the work with partners, the council leader said he had met with an Edmonton Green youth charity, Northside Youth and Community Connections (NYCC), which works with parents, schools, police and NHS to tackle knife crime and help collect weapons off the streets.

Cllr Erbil said: “They meet these young people, speak to them, confiscate these weapons, then hand them over to the police who melt them down.”

Hoping the government’s zombie knife ban, which came into effect in September, would reduce crime, Cllr Erbil said one of the main causes of the problem was the accessibility of the weapons.

He said: “Some knives you can buy online for less than a pound and there’s no online checks, they’re sold as toys or costumes but they’re knives.”

Cllr Erbil added that some of the knife crime was gang related but most was “out of fear” and people wanting to protect themselves.

Conservative councillor James Hockney asked about the council’s commitment to create a law enforcement team of 50 officers, a pledge the Labour administration made in the run-up to the 2022 local election.

Cllr Erbil said the council was reviewing schemes to bring forward that would deliver more law enforcement officers “soon” but financial difficulties and inflation had delayed this.

However, he mentioned work done by ‘Operation Pisces‘, the council’s partnership with the Metropolitan Police focusing on two of the most impacted wards, Upper Edmonton and Edmonton Green, which was helping to improve safety.

The report stated that between June and September, overall crime in these areas had reduced by 35% and by 25% during the same period across the whole borough.

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