THE SUB GROUPS: COMMUNITY REPRESENTATION

It is important that the LGBT Advisory Group maintains a continuous dialogue with the community we purport to represent. We have to disseminate information on our activities whilst providing a listening ear to the concerns of the LGBT community. The Community Representation (CR) sub group is responsible for developing and coordinating this reciprocal dialogue.

WHAT WE DO

Our core activities:

we publish an occasional newsletter to inform the community of our work;

we develop and maintain the LGBT AG website;

we manage an electronic mailing list for sending out information to individuals and organisations;

we continue to complie a database of contact details for a wide range of about 400 venues and organizations including the ever expanding group of Borough LGBT Forums;

we invite speakers from LGBT related organisations to give a regular series of seminars to the Advisory Group

More recently, this group has taken on another task. The Lesbian and Gay National Advisory Group (NAG) has existed for several years, with quarterly meetings somewhere in England. We are working to make it more accessible to community participants.

LATEST PROJECTS

The CR sub group worked hard in 2004 to continue raising the Advisory Group’s profile within our community and also to act as a point of contact to bring together London-wide community groups and individuals with an interest in policing issues.

Increasing our profile

As part of our continuing strategy to keep our community informed of the LGBT AG’s work, we produced the LGBT Advisory Group Annual Report for 2003. We also created and distributed a leaflet which details the structure of the Advisory Group and describes the function of the various sub groups. A member of the sub group produced business cards for every member of the LGBT AG. Our website has a news section which is regularly updated. A recent view of the website content found that some information is now out of date. Therefore, a revamped version of the site is planned for spring 2005.

Local Groups Evening

A large part of our work in 2004 involved a search for LGBT contacts within the various boroughs of London. This proved to be surprisingly difficult to organise. Initially, we hoped to stage an evening meeting with representatives from all the local groups we could find in May 2004, but found we could not get a representative selection along to a meeting at that time and put off the meeting until October.

After considerable research between CR Members we finally managed to stage the Local Groups Evening on Oct 13 th. The turnout was somewhat short of expectations but gave us a clue of the distance we have to go to reach our aim and have a functioning local group in most of the MPS’s 32 boroughs.

LGBT Forum and Crime and Disorder reduction Partnership Liaison Officer

As well as the police wanting advice from the LGBT communities, each borough has a Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership (a panel of key agencies including the police and the local authority) which has a statutory duty to consult local LGBT people.  Some of the Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships want to consult LGBT people but in boroughs with no venues they are unsure where to find us and in the boroughs that do have LGBT venues it can be all too easy to talk to only those LGBT people that use the scene, forgetting about the many LGBT people who don’t go to LGBT venues.

The LGBT Advisory Group knew that a network of LGBT contacts in each London borough would allow us to give the police and the Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships the advice they needed and by doing so, local LGBT communities could have a real impact on community safety and policing in their borough. 

The LGBT Advisory Group was delighted when the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office offered to fund a full time member of staff for one year to develop a network of grassroots LGBT contacts in every London borough.  Sam Goldberg was appointed to the role and will start work in April.  She will work in partnership with Galop (London’s LGBT hate crime charity) and will be based in their offices.

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