Do your friends and family know how you are getting home?

Hereford night time businesses and police have joined forces to raise awareness to the community to make sure that your friends and family know how you are getting home!

A community initiative in Hereford, are coming together to support young people in unlocking their summer safely. Local bars, pubs and eateries have previously come together to form Herefordshire Against Night-time Disorder (HAND) and most recently they have brought together local residents to ensure that their friends and family know how they are getting home.

Ask to speak at the session, hosted at Saxty’s bar in Hereford, was Nick Gazzard who spoke to a group of young people and delegates from the community to emphasise the importance of people knowing where you are and that you get home safely. Nick is the father to Hollie Gazzard, who was tragically murdered in 2014 and with his family set up a charitable trust.

The Hollie Gazzard Trust charity helps reduce domestic violence through creating and delivering programmes on domestic abuse and promoting healthy relationships to schools and colleges, and through the creation of the Hollie Guard app that can be downloaded to a smart phone.

Once you have downloaded the app by shaking your phone it activates Hollie Guard, immediately notifying your chosen contacts, pinpointing your location and sending audio and video evidence directly to their mobile phones. You can also set start and end destinations before you go out and it will notify your emergency contacts should you not get to your destination in the time perimeters you set.

About HAND

HAND is a scheme that links local licensed premises owners and staff together with the local police team using a messaging service. This will allow them to pass along information and intelligence relating to those that have drunk too much, have been barred, and /or are causing nuisance or committing crime during the evening.

PC Christopher Lea who has supported the scheme said: “Our licensing team offer support to HAND and want to help all the members of our community to enjoy their nights out from start to finish.

“Nuisance behaviour during the evening may seem a low priority to some people, however it is can heighten and serious and dangerous crime such as assault.

“The benefits to the outlets and the community to provide a communication link directly to each other enable them to know who to look out for and challenge.

“The community in Herefordshire deserve to live, work and socialise safely and this scheme really cares for the community and wants to ensure that people are safe.”

Find out more about the HollieGuard app here.