Bury Council recognised at prestigious LGC & HSJ Sustainable Communities Awards 2009

Date published: 23 February 2009

Bury Council, working as part of the Greater Manchester Public Protection Partnership, has won the prestigious LGC & HSJ Sustainable Communities Award for Safer Communities.

The Greater Manchester Public Protection Partnership was selected for the national award from a vast shortlist and is one of just a handful of winners to achieve this recognition from a total of more than 200 entries.

Bury works as part of the Greater Manchester Public Protection Partnership to deliver cost effective and consistent public protection across Greater Manchester and this award was granted in recognition of their hard work and impressive impact of the Greater Manchester Retail Violence Initiative.

The main aim of the initiative is to use a range of approaches by working in partnership with key organisations to significantly reduce the unacceptable number of armed robberies that are taking place and to raise awareness of effective security measures and safety standards and the legal requirements placed upon businesses to take steps to manage the risk of violence. Most businesses have received the initiative extremely well and have implemented changes or improvements to further protect staff and reduce the likelihood of an incident.

The awards judges, local government and healthcare management experts, said the overall quality of entries was higher this year than in any previous year.

The LGC & HSJ Sustainable Communities Awards are the UK's largest community awards. Winning or being short listed for an award is a real mark of achievement.

The ceremony, at the Brewery in London on 5 February, was attended by around 600 guests from the Local Government, Healthcare and Voluntary sectors.

A judge for the awards said: “The winner of this award filled all of the key criteria for the judges. Its focus on low paid workers was particularly good and is a positive example of work place cohesion. There was a solid file of evidence of good stakeholder engagement and strong evidence of sharing with others”.

For more information about the awards and the full list of winners, www.scawards.co.uk