David Simmons - Biography

David Simmons was elected as the Conservative Councillor for Cokeham Ward, Sompting in May 2006.  As a family man with twelve grandchildren, he still finds time to deal with issues on behalf of the residents in his “patch” as well as take part in a number of committees at Adur District Council. As a Councillor, he has sat as Chair of the Licensing Committee, Vice-Chair of the Planning and Regulatory Community and Leisure Committees. He also sits on the Adur Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership and is currently Cabinet Member for Safety, Community Health and Well-being.

He is sixty four years of age, and has had a wide and varied career, which included printing, graphic art and design, and police work as a career police officer. During his time with the Sussex force, he had responsibility for schools liaison services, crime prevention officers and neighbourhood watch throughout Sussex. He was responsible for developing the concept and then the reality of the Neighbourhood Watch Ring Round System which he then implemented across Sussex, receiving a national award for this work.  The system went on to be implemented nationally and internationally over subsequent years.

For the last ten years of his service, he had another live interest, that of community race relations and the wider field of diversity, and assisted the force to develop policy to address community concerns. One of his particular concerns is diversion of young people away from crime, and his work gained national recognition from the Education Minister as best practice in tackling those excluded from school and associated criminality, as well as their future employment prospects.

Following 30 years with Sussex Police, where he retired as a senior police officer in 1996, David moved to work for the Sussex Police Authority where he had direct responsibility for consulting with the public as well as linking to the 13 Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships across Sussex. In addition he was a member of the Diversity sub-committee of the Association of Police Authorities at national level, supporting members working directly with the Lawrence Inquiry, chaired by the Home Secretary.

While at the Police Authority, David, working with other partners, developed many initiatives to tackle community and crime issues. Such programmes included ways to tackle domestic violence, neighbourhood mediation services, and youth diversion programmes, often funded through the Police Authority grants fund, which David managed. Other initiatives included running courses for voluntary organisations with Lloyds TSB as a partner, on how to make funding applications to support their work.

As a member of the National Community Safety Network, he assisted in its development from a small body to one of over 400 member organisations. After taking the network into charitable and limited company status, he chaired the Board of Directors for four years.  In this capacity, he sat on a number of Home Office and Local Government Association advisory panels in respect of community safety, drugs and crime issues, and was a member of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister’s Beacon Council Team 2004 assessing partnerships.

For the last 11 years, David has also been a member of Crimestoppers, and is the Vice-Chair of the Sussex Crimestoppers Board, actively involved in developing local campaigns across Sussex and the South East to tackle local crime hot-spots before standing down this year.

Now working as an independent Consultant, he has just finished a two year contract with the Government Office South East to develop the government’s Change-Up programme, which looks to sustain the voluntary and community sector until 2014. With a focus on marginalised communities, he has been responsible for setting up a South East Regional Forum to represent the needs of Black and Ethnic Minority people, gypsy travellers, faith groups, refugees, asylum seekers and migrant workers.

Other work has included setting up and running seminars for elected members from councils across the South East to inform them of the detail and obligations of safer community legislation and how this translates into community need..

In his spare time, he enjoys choral music, and sings with Shoreham Chamber Choir, is a member of St Nicolas Church Choir, Old Shoreham and runs a vocal quintet.  Most of the music he sings is 15^th 16^th and 17^th century, but he has been known to sing barbershop and other more recent music.  Computers, DIY and oil painting take their place alongside time he spends with his grandchildren.