Joined up Lancs campaign reduces World Cup demand

Lancashire’s Community Safety Strategy Steering Group created a pan-county safety campaign during this year’s FIFA World Cup to help reduce the demands on the fire, police and ambulance services. Our research showed that major football tournaments increase community safety risks, place additional demand on services and cause harm to individuals and communities.

The campaign, which was led by Lancashire Fire & Rescue, Lancashire Constabulary and Lancashire Police and Crime Commissioner’s Office, contained four strands:

·         Domestic abuse

·         Alcohol-related violent crime

·         Drink-driving

·         Deliberate and accidental fires

The over-arching aim of the campaign was to mitigate "The Ugly Consequences of the Beautiful Game" by encouraging people to think twice about their behaviour and subsequently minimise harm.

Tactics

To get our safety message across to the public we promoted the campaign on the internet, on social media, radio advertising; safety events and supporting materials were printed such as billboard advertisements, vinyl banners, beer mats and keyrings were distributed.                                                                                             

Outputs and outcomes

·         The reach of the media coverage was 289,898 people

·         39 tweets were sent out reaching 788,097 people. The same 39 messages were also sent out on Facebook reaching 10,410 users.

·         641 people visited the Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service website to view information that was specific to the campaign.

·         The adverts were played a total of 255 times on Rock FM, Radio Wave, The Bee, 2BR, and The Bay. They reached 664,151 people during the four week campaign

·         Approximately 3000 people attended the road safety events.

During the World Cup period, the number of accidental fires, deliberate fires and road traffic collisions that Lancshire FRS attended reduced significantly compared to the year before and during the last World Cup in 2010.

There was a 10% reduction from 2013 in the number of road traffic collisions, there was a 41% decrease in the number of fires started in the kitchen compared to 2010 and the number of deliberate fires has reduced by 38% since this period last year.

- Richard Edney, Lancashire FRS