The Enfield Equalities Board is set to intensify its focus on monitoring hate crime in the borough, as part of its commitment to promoting safer and stronger communities. To ensure under-reported hate crimes are captured, particularly those affecting marginalised communities, the Equalities Board visited and briefed over 55 community centres on understanding hate crime.

The decision was made during the Equalities Board meeting on Monday, 6th October 2025, where members discussed the work programme for 2025/26. A key component of this programme is a monitoring report on hate crime in Enfield, which will provide an update on current incidents and a comparison to the previous year. The Equalities Board will monitor hate crime incidents using a revitalised bi-monthly Case Management Panel (CMP). This panel uses a multi-agency approach to tackle hate crime, support victims, and reduce repeat victimisation. The CMP is chaired by an independent local community representative and enables scrutiny of how crimes are handled.

Hate crime is defined as any criminal offence perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic. These characteristics include disability, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation and trans identity.

According to the Annual Equalities Report 2024/25, the reporting of hate crime in Enfield decreased by 19.4% from Quarter 1 (165 offences) to Quarter 4 in 2024/25 (133 offences). Racist and religious hate crime offences make up the highest proportion of the hate crime strands - 562 of the 609 offences recorded over 2024/25.

To combat hate crime, Enfield Council has a number of initiatives, including:

  • Enfield Hate Crime Forum: A multi-agency group that brings together various organisations in the borough to effectively tackle various strands of hate crime. The Forum will support the National Hate Crime awareness week, provide educational workshops and assemblies to over 1,600 pupils, work with community partners to enable reporting, promote engagement events with community groups (in particular faith communities), and update the Enfield Hate Crime Strategy, expected to be finalised in summer 2025 and included in the new Community Safety Plan.
  • Delivery of our Hate Crime Strategy and Community Safety Action plan: This includes a revitalised bi-monthly Case Management Panel, educational workshops and assemblies in schools, and working with key community partners to enable reporting of Hate Crimes.
  • Faith Forum: Working through the Faith Forum to prevent hate crime occurring by supporting Enfield faith groups and their faith communities to promote peace, mutual understanding and respect.