Cape Town: Hundreds of Neighbourhood Watches sign up for Smart App. The App allows members of registered Neighbourhood Watches to log service requests and incidents, and it also serves as an administrative tool for organisations.
The idea for the App was first touted in late 2020, when the City of Cape Town solicited inputs from Neighbourhood Watches (NWs) to help guide the tool’s development. In 2024, the application went live and the training of individual NWs got under way. To date, 270 groups have been on-boarded through structured training sessions, comprising of nearly 1400 individuals.
Entry volumes have skyrocketed, from 1072 entries in March 2025 to 4303 in March 2026. Service requests and policing-related issues are most common, with NWs in Edgemead and Heideveld accounting for the highest usage statistics.
Considering this, Member of the Mayoral Committee for Safety and Security – Alderman JP Smith stated that they are planning further mass training sessions in the coming weeks to expand the rollout and reach as many potential users as possible.
This application empowers Neighbourhood Watch structures and provides ease of access to critical municipal services. It also serves as a platform that the City of Cape Town can leverage to determine hotspots, pinpoint particular challenges and adjust deployment levels and priorities based on the data emerging from a particular area or suburb.
The App can be downloaded from the various Play Stores but is limited to NWs that are registered with the Western Cape Department of Police Oversight and Community Safety. Persons using the tool require credentials that are generated once their organisation’s accreditation is verified. Users are able to create general City C3 service notification requests and incidents that automatically trigger a reference number.
Other features include:
- Icon groupings to make finding what they need to report on easier and more intuitive.
- Addresses are displayed in order of physical closeness to the user, to make fault reporting easier.
- Light data usage.
- The ability to upload attachments like photographs and video clips.
NWs can also use the App to manage their duty rosters, patrols and time schedules.