Police and Crime Commissioner: Effective holistic policing for safer neighbourhoods
Wherever and whenever I speak to residents and business owners across Bedfordshire, they tell me that they want to see more police officers and police community support officers (PCSOs) in neighbourhoods, industrial areas, and town centres.
This desire is understandable. Visible policing builds public trust, and national research tells us that it makes people feel safer.
I am committed to strengthening local community and neighbourhood policing in rural and urban areas. In the last two years the number of community police officers and PCSOs has increased, and in March 2027 there will be 126 officers and 46 PCSOs. This has been made possible by reallocating the police budget and using the government’s £1.8m Neighbourhood Police Guarantee (NPG) funding which we received last year.
The NPG is about more than money and officers. The guarantee requires the police service to minimise abstractions – when officers are moved to other duties other than in emergency situations, to ensure that every ward has a named police officer or PCSO as the main point of contact, and to respond to non-emergency incidents within seventy two hours expect Bedfordshire Police to meet these standards and hold the Chief Constable to account for achieving them.
We need to go further, we need and are working on a new strategy which enhances local policing with a focus on preventing crime, solving crime and problem solving. Local policing is not a soft option it includes executing warrants for serious crimes and is a source of intelligence to disrupt and solve major criminality.
Community policing includes specialist teams such as the Rural Crime Action Team (RCAT), the education and diversion teams and the community cohesion team.
However, community policing is not the only resource available to support every resident and business. Response officers respond to 999 emergency calls. Local areas benefit from the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire (BCH) collaborative road traffic teams and armed policing teams who can complement response and community teams.
Every resident and every business benefit from specialist police units and teams including the control room, CID, the Major Crime Unit, the rape and serious sexual crime team (RASSO), cyber and economic crime unit, armed policing and roads traffic policing. There are also specialist planning and analytical teams who contribute to securing outcomes for victims and communities.
Every one of us living and doing business in Bedfordshire has the service over 1486 police officer and 1232 police staff. Most of these officers and staff have neighbourhood beats but each one of them serves us all every day of the year.
Police finances are severely limited so the police must allocate resources in ways that achieve the best possible outcomes to keep the county safer. I expect the right balance to be struck to ensure Bedfordshire is safe and well policed.