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CWU's Dangerous Dogs Initiative In The Greater Manchester Area

Nationally, the CWU's Dangerous Dogs Campaign has been extremely effective in terms of changes to the Law and awareness training within CWU Branches and within employers such as Royal Mail.

But some of the biggest chanages have been taking place in North West cities such as Liverpool and Manchester. and is stepping up because of the possibel loss of H&S campiagns nationally because of CWU's 'Re-Design' and the abolition of the Health & Safety Dept in CWU HQ.

Here, Mark Holt, CWU NW Regional Committee Health & Safety Lead, (pictured below) updates Unionsafety readers on the current discussions with Greater Manchester Police regarding theirr policy on Dangerous Dog attacks:

Carl Webb, CWU NW Regional Secretary, and I met with the Greater Manchester Deputy Mayors team yesterday and Sergeant Emma Kennedy from GMP, who leads the dog safety team.

We had a very positive meeting and have a number of action points to hopefully ensure that GMP signs up to a service level agreement with us around dangerous dogs and forms a Greater Manchester Dog Safety Partnership simular to what Jamie has in Merseyside.

Greater Manchester Police are currently struggling with the XL Bully ban, which is putting huge pressures on the dog safety team but also financially on the police force. Sergeant Emma Kennedy was very honest and agreed with us that GMPs' response to Dog Attacks is hit and miss. She outlined one case, which is a member in my branch, which has taken 4 years to get to court.

With this in mind, for the meantime, she has offered to be a point of contact for ASRs/Co ords in the Greater Manchester Area. So if we have any dog attacks on members where the police response is poor, she will directly get involved in the investigation to escalate. I will share Sergeant Kennedys details with the relevant reps.

Our next steps are for the deputy mayor's team and myself to attend the next MDSP meeting so we can look at getting key stakeholders involved in Greater Manchester. We are also going to look at running a community campaign/trial in Wigan area. This has been highlighted by the police as the dog attack hot spot in Greater Manchester.

The end goal is to get simular partnerships in Lancashire, Cheshire, and Cumbria, so we have uniformaty across the region, ensuring our members receive the correct response from the police but also to work in communities to educate and raise awareness.

Source: Mark Holt / unionsafety

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