Share your views on crime and safety in Reading 2025
Reading's Community Safety Survey runs every year and is a chance for you to share your views on how safe you feel and the crime issues affecting you in Reading. Your feedback will help us make Reading safer.
Crime and safety in Reading is tackled by Reading’s Community Safety Partnership (CSP). By law, every local authority (council), police force and other crime agencies have to work in partnership to tackle community safety and serious violence issues in their local areas. We publish a strategy every 3 years which details what we will do to make Reading safer. The results of the survey will inform future strategies based on residents priorities.
The CSP's priorities between 2023 and 2026:
- Reduce crime in hotspot areas, including anti-social behaviour and hate crime.
- Reduce knife violence.
- Improve safety for women in public places.
- Reduce drug activity in neighbourhoods and tackle organised crime gangs that transport illegal drugs across Reading’s borders.
- Reduce repeat offending by people who commit crimes.
The CSP strategy can be seen in detail on Reading Borough Council's website.
If you have any questions or require further information please email csp@reading.gov.uk.
The closing date is 31st August 2025
Phases
Results & Outcome
The responses to the 2025 Survey have now been fully shared with Reading's Community Safety Partnership (CSP), which has approved the following responses.
Responses to the Key Themes from the Survey:
- Town Centre issues – including aggressive begging drug dealing, Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) and women’s safety. Reading’s CSP has approved approve the creation of a Town Centre Safety Group to be led by Thames Valley Police’s Local Commander that will bring partners together to problem solve these issues and look at communications to improve people’s awareness of the activity happening to improve safety.
- Reckless and dangerous riding of e-bikes and e-scooters. A Reading borough-wide Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) is being implemented on 24 March 2026 to address ASB, including using Electric Scooters and/or any type of Electric Bike in a malicious and/or dangerous manner in a public place. This will give Thames Valley Police the powers to engage and educate individuals who are cycling anti-socially, with the ultimate sanction through a Fixed Penalty Notice and/or Summons to the Magistrates court. This will be overseen by Reading’s CSP.
- Drug dealing and related ASB. This is being focussed on as a partnership priority.
- Lack of Police presence in neighbourhoods. There is a need for better communications from the CSP to raise awareness of Police responses to crime and this will be fed into the CSP communications planning and the Town Centre Safety Group.
- Retail crime. There are several Retail Operations underway across Reading which are showing success in reducing theft. The effectiveness of these will be fed into the Strategic Needs Assessment as part of the development of the new Community Safety and Serious Violence Strategy 2026-2029.
- Environmental issues. Five dedicated environmental enforcement officers were introduced by RBC in September 2025 to patrol hotspot areas daily—including weekends and public holidays—to deter environmental offences (including issuing fines). This new team, working in partnership with Kingdom Local Authority Support, is funded through enforcement revenue. These officers work alongside the existing Street-Cleansing operatives who empty bins and remove fly-tipping 7 days a week. The Council also introduced higher fines in April 2025 to reflect the seriousness of these offences and to match national guidelines: £1,000 for fly tipping (previously £400); £500 for littering or graffiti (previously £80); £600 for incorrect household waste disposal (previously £400).
All results will feed into the development of the new Community Safety and Serious Violence Strategy 2026-2029, which is being commissioned early 2026, particularly in shaping the priorities for the Community Safety Partnership.