Between 2011 and 2015, the Police Foundation’s Police Effectiveness in a Changing World research team worked closely with the police and their community safety partners in Luton and Slough – two English towns that had experienced the local impact of global change particularly acutely.

This is one of two concluding reports from the project which details the process, experience and research findings from Slough. The research started with a problem orientated, multi-agency approach to tackling violence.

Using action research we took a problem-oriented approach by identifying local crime problems, improving the way they were understood and developing interventions to tackle them. Then we assessed the outcomes of these and the challenges of implementing them.

Throughout the project we drew on the wider evidence-base on police effectiveness to promote local partnerships, to better deal with the ‘changing world’ and to find sustainable solutions to local crime problems. Most importantly we sought to learn lessons from the process of working with forces on the ground.