New chief constable responds to MP's call for more police in Leighton Buzzard area

The MP for South West Bedfordshire, Andrew Selous, has said in the local media that he is “looking forward” to welcoming the county’s new chief constable to his constituency early next year.

He added that he is “hopeful” that the new chief, Trevor Rodenhurst, will be able to base more police officers in Leighton Buzzard, Dunstable and Houghton Regis, “as has happened in the past.”

The Local Democracy Reporting Service asked Mr Rodenhurst about the county’s MPs requesting more officers in their areas.

“If I was an MP, I would want more visibility on my patch,” he said.

“As the number of students we have become operationally highly effective individuals it may be that we can increase the visibility in market towns.

“But at the moment we’re focused on them becoming operationally effective.

“Nevertheless our resources in community teams has been the highest it’s been for a long, long time, but we are still looking at the small things we can do to improve our service.

“Andrew [Selous] represents Leighton Buzzard, we have done a few things over there,” he said.

“We have resources that are ring-fenced to patrol that area, and we have some touchdown points in that area.

“So unless [officers] make an arrest and need to take the prisoner back to the police station, they can do everything they need [at a touchdown point],” he explained.

Mr Rodenhurst said that this way of working is starting to improve the force’s response times.

“We are making more effective use of the space that’s available [to us], to use [buildings] which might not be ours so we can improve the service to the public,” he said.

“We do have a ten years’ look forward in terms of our estate, but we are doing it with local authorities, the fire service, and other sectors to say, ‘who’s got the building whose lifetime means that it is going to be operational for the foreseeable future?’

“And what capacity is there so that we can plan to expand our footprint in a slightly different way.

“I’m a resident of Central Bedfordshire and I am certainly alive to the views of Central Beds [residents] in terms of feeling of where the main deployment bases are.

“That’s something we’re looking at, we’re not looking at great big police stations, but we might have estate footprints that enable us to be as responsive as we can with our resources,” he said.

Mr Rodenhurst said that all the county’s MPs meet, as a collective, with him once a month to discuss policing issues.

“They all recognise that Bedfordshire Police is underfunded, and they want it to have more funding,” he said.

“So they, across party, have agreed to support me and the force with making the case and to debate in Parliament, etc., to support funding, and I’m really grateful to all of them for that,” he said.