Neighbourhood Watch – New Village Coordinators
Priscilla Pinkham has retired as the Village NHW Coordinator after 20 years, which was acknowledged at the April Annual Parish Meeting. We have therefore agreed to be jointly appointed to this role and recently completed our police verification checks.
We have lived in Wisborough Green since 2002 and know the village well. Simon was a Sussex Police Officer and Philippa a nurse, now involved in care for the elderly. We are increasingly concerned about the threat posed to the village, not just from residential and commercial burglaries and thefts of and from cars and vans, but also anti-social behaviour. The vandalism of the Jubilee Tree in Songhurst Meadow is a case in point.
Technology has moved on and we have an opportunity to circulate Sussex Police Alerts more quickly and widely in the village. Of equal concern is the threat from cyber-crime, either via email phishing attacks or phone scams. Simon has recently completed a 12 month deployment with the UK Financial Intelligence Unit (part of the National Crime Agency) and reviewed many reports where UK based victims have lost millions in savings to scams. Future circulations will highlight the latest methods used by scammers, and the warnings or red flags villagers should look out for to recognise when they are being contacted by fraudsters!
The Neighbourhood Watch organisation has a database of village residents’ email addresses. We will be in touch in due course in the hope that we can spread the word further and hope to establish other communication methods to speed up warnings.
Thank you for your support.
Simon and Philippa
Wisborough Green Noticeboard Facebook Group
Although, from time to time, we will publish certain “non-time critical” Neighbourhood Watch items in Ad Vincula, we don’t have the space to publish much of the vast amount of information that comes through. Simon & Philippa will, therefore, publish most items on the Wisborough Green Facebook Group or e-mail them to those that have requested to be on Simon’s circulation list.
I know not everyone likes Facebook for various reasons, but I would urge you to consider joining, if only to be able to join this Community Group. It’s a “closed” group which means only those approved by the Admins can join and see the posts on there. The link is https://www.facebook.com/groups/522698378117163/ but, if that doesn’t work, just search for Wisborough Green Noticeboard in Facebook.