Innovative SYP parking operation reaches final of national award  

A problem solving operation to address a key community issue in Sheffield has reached the final for a prestigious national award.

Operation Parksafe has today (Tuesday 29 August) been named as a 2023 Tilley Awards finalist after receiving one of the five highest overall scores from the judging panel.

Utilising a problem solving approach, Op Parksafe was introduced by Sheffield North West NPT (Neighbourhood Policing Team) to provide members of our community with access to a new web-based platform to report local parking offences, after it was raised a key community priority.

Since its introduction in June 2022, this platform has been used to make more than 600 parking reports and of these reports, over 80 per cent have resulted in enforcement action.

It has also helped increase road safety in the local area and improved overall community satisfaction.

Neighbourhood Inspector Kevin Smith, who has led this operation, will now attend the National Problem Solving Conference in October to present this project to the Tilley Award judging panel and audience members.

The judging panel, which is made up of problem solving subject matter experts, will score this and the other four finalists’ presentations against the awards criteria to determine who the overall 2023 Tilley Award winner will be.

The overall winner will be announced on Wednesday 4 October and the four other winning finalists are as follows:

• Greater Manchester Police: Operation Vulcan - Swooping in on the Counterfeit Capital of the UK
• Greater Manchester Police: Problem solving knife-enabled robbery
• Northamptonshire Police: Accident Reduction
• Police Service of Northern Ireland: Between the lines - Dungannon

The national Tilley Awards, which are facilitated by the Problem Solving and Demand Reduction Programme, were revived in 2017 to provide police forces and our partners with the opportunity to showcase and celebrate different problem solving initiatives introduced to address local and national issues.

Further information on the awards and National Problem Solving Conference is available here.