Specialist teams aimed at preventing youngsters who commit crimes from re-offending should be up and running in Bradford by next year.

The ground-breaking groups, called Youths Offending Teams (YOTS), will consist of social workers, police officers, probation officers, education officers, and health officers all working together.

They will be part of a Government scheme aimed at encouraging local authorities, the police, and other agencies to work together to fight crime under the Crime and Disorder Act which came into force this July.

Bradford has been picked, along with eleven other towns and cities, as a 'pathfinder' site for the scheme which will be used to help the Home Offices to test their new multi-agency approach to fighting crime.

Bradford Council's community safety policy officer Sharmila Gandhi said it was the first time legislation had been set down to make the Council, the police, and others partners officially work together.

She said since June her department had been collating a crime audit consisting of recorded crime as well police incident information to gather a picture of which areas in Bradford needed the most attention.

The scheme doesn't get under way officially until October but once it is up and running a national task force, made up of two senior police officers and a community safety officer, will monitor Bradford's progress along with the other pathfinder areas to ensure the Crime and Disorder Act is being properly enforced.

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