by Colin Booker, Police Community Support Officer and Gypsy/Traveller Liaison officer for Sussex Police on Chichester District.
My day to day work revolves around dealing with low level crime and anti-social behaviour in the small villages within Funtington and Westbourne wards of Chichester District. Because I am also one of the Traveller Liaison Officers on the district I am involved in dealing with any unauthorised encampments that arise within the whole district.
ECINS is used by various agencies for various purposes, the main purposes for myself are for any ongoing neighbour issues and to record all details of any unauthorised traveller encampments.
Using ECINS has certainly made things easier as anything that is recorded on there can be viewed and added to by any agency that has access to that particular file, along with keeping track of what actions have been taken by what agency. Quite often all will play a different role in the eviction process of unauthorised encampments.
I have been an ECINS user for just over a year now and while it hasn’t changed how I work it has certainly improved the way in which records are kept as ECINS is a very easy and user friendly system to use so you can find information quickly.
ECINS has helped with agencies accessing the same information so when the logs are updated everybody can see what actions have been taken, what results have been achieved and what actions are still outstanding.
It is easy to use and is all kept in one place so you can find information quickly and easily instead of having to trawl through numerous systems to find what you are looking for.
Last year we had an awful lot of unauthorised traveller encampments within the district and by using ECINS we had records of which group had been where, when they had been there and where they went to next. This was updated by every agency involved in dealing with the eviction process so everybody knew what was going on with each encampment and could keep track of all of the actions.
Due to everyone knowing what was happening it made things easier for each agency when dealing with any particular issues that arose from the encampments or from residents living close by.
