CITY bosses and police chiefs have come together to tackle violent crime in Southampton.

The summit held at St Mary’s yesterday was described as the first of its kind in the city as it saw councillors, police bosses, businesses, volunteers and health experts come under one roof to start drawing up plans to reduce crime in the city.

It comes as figures revealed last month showed that crime rate in Southampton has gone up for the fifth year running, with violent crime being the largest offence in the last year with 11,079 incidents, 779 more than in 2017/18.

Last week local businesses called for action as they claimed there has been a sharp rise in “uncontrolled” aggressive begging, staff intimidation and public drug use across the city centre.

Now work to decide what action to take has begun with a final plan expected to be unveiled by the end of March and implemented straight after.

At yesterday’s summit, Superintendent Kelly Whiting, district commander in Southampton, called on everyone in the city to come together to tackle crime.

Talking to the audience she said: “I need your help. We must never accept or tolerate crime. If I didn’t think that together we could reduce crime in the city I would not be here today. I believe we can do this, we just need to work together.”

The focus of the discussion was mainly on prevention, early intervention and how to support young children and teenagers in the city.

It comes as Chris Brown, Violence Reduction Unit manager, told the audience that 82.9% of offenders in the city are men under 25.

He said the intervention should focus on young people and on the most deprived areas of the city.

Among the actions that were recommended at the summit there are more work with schools, and support and activities for children during summer holidays.

Mr Brown added: “We need to get together as a city to come up with a solution to these problems. It’s key to get the feedback and input of people who can contribute to this plan. There are still a few challenges but the important thing is we just start building the process and structure to bring people together to tackle it. Prevention is better than cure. Predominantly we are working with young people and working with them sooner rather than later to divert them from being involved in violence and giving them tools around better decision making. We have got no specific target, I think we need start the work and then look at what results we are getting."

Cllr Dave Shields, cabinet member for healthier and safer city at Southampton City Council said: “We need to understand what it is that is driving this crime. Any increase in crime is something that is going to concern me. The problems are increasing in Southampton and I think that’s partly to do with the impacts that austerity has had on this city, harder than many other areas.”