Yesterday I attended a Microsoft Teams Meeting with our local Police Coordinator and local Safer Neighbourhood Police Team Sergeant. This 30 minute meeting was set up because they felt coordinators had been raising questions concerning the new way they deal with Neighbourhood Watch. Nowadays they simply send Neighbourhood Watch groups a monthly newsletter (one side A4). I circulated the August issue.
Disconcertingly I was the only coordinator in attendance for most of the meeting. I suggested that what could be of particular interest to residents is crime taking place in other residential areas to enable them to WATCH OUT and take preventative action. I gave some examples of the crimes we had here after the end of lockdown.
What I believe is most important is that you let us know about any crime you experience so we may circulate a suitable warning asap. In addition to circulating our emails to over 170 residents in GMTRA’s contacts list and the Safer Neighbourhood Police (Crouch End, Muswell Hill and Highgate), when appropriate, we’ve copied the coordinators of the Shepherds Hill NW and Shepherds Cot Trust NW, as well as representatives of Highgate Wood School, the Shepherds Hill Allotments and Crouch End Open Space. In future we will include the new Coolhurst Road NW.
We circulate emails bcc and emails to GMTRA are only read by John Tillotson and myself. The Neighbourly GMT Support WhatsApp group is a great way to whizz out a warning but if possible do please also email your message to gmtra@hotmail.com. Meanwhile you might like to note the ‘Haringey Council Tax calling Scam’ below circulated by our local councillors.
Haringey Council Tax calling scam
We have received reports of residents being called by individuals claiming to be from Haringey Council in respect to overdue/unpaid Council Tax or other matters relating to council tax. In most instances the call comes from a withheld number, and holds some information on the resident, but requests personal information to “verify” their account.
Please be aware that these are scam calls and are not being conducted by the council.
The council does not withhold numbers when making outbound calls from the council’s phone line or associated extension numbers, nor from council mobiles.
If you are in any doubt about the validity of a call, particularly if you receive a call from the council that you are not expecting, we would ask that you make a note of the name of the caller given, their department and what it is regarding and either say you will call the council’s customer service number back to verify the call (020 8489 1000) or pass the details on to your local councillors who will be able to raise it on your behalf.