Tamworth Regional councillor Mark Rodda calls to increase community representation for crime prevention

Vehicle theft and graffiti remain the areas of concern, as the Tamworth Regional Council Crime Prevention Working Group looks to enlist more assistance.

Chair of the working group, councillor Mark Rodda, is hoping his fellow councillors will see the need for more hands on deck when the decision to increase the community representation of the group goes before council on Tuesday.

"I'd be very surprised if there's any objection," Cr Rodda said.

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The working group is hoping to expand its community representative panel by one, bringing the total number of members to four.

"By increasing the number we are trying to get a better understanding of the needs and wants of our local community members," Cr Rodda said.

"Some of those community members come from diverse backgrounds in their current or former work lives, and we just want to capture some more of that experience."

A name change is also on the cards for the working group, with the new proposed name to be the Tamworth Regional Community Safety Working Group.

Cr Rodda said the new name would better reflect the capacity of the group.

"I think the previous name almost implied that we have the power to stop crime ... when we don't. It's not really in our remit to do that, that's the job of the police," he said.

"We thought we'd actually adopt a name that might represent what we could do as a council.

"We are an advocacy group on behalf of the community to basically raise concerns directly to our elected representatives at the other two tiers of government, who have a responsibility for policing and community safety."

Police have managed to stamp out excessive property offences after a wave of crime surged through the city earlier in the year.

But with Tamworth's social media sites still littered with videos and images of night-time prowlers, Cr Rodda said the most important thing people could do was to report incidents to police.

"Governments are often driven by statistics and it's often the only way that governments can determine how to resource areas," he said.

"If they're [statistics] are low, then the government looks at those sort of results and thinks that's not a priority area.

"If people are victim to these incidences they need to report them no matter how small."

Council will vote on the changes to the working group at a meeting on Tuesday.

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