With cash comes expectations

The Government announcement of new funding for neighbourhood policing was welcome, and timely. Coming as it did just a few days before I had to share my plans with the county council’s police and crime panel for meeting the cost of policing in Gloucestershire over the next twelve months. For while our Constabulary is no different from every other police force in the country in feeling the pinch, I hope it is reassuring that every penny available will go into policing our streets.  

All the details are still to be finalised, but we now know that there are clear government expectations for focused work on tackling male violence against women and girls, for example, and tackling anti-social behaviour.  Both of these areas will be prominent in our planning for the next 12 months.

It has been mentioned many times that the nature of criminality is evolving.  Complex, serious, cross-border crime, which is often hidden in plain sight by targeting the most vulnerable in our society, on the internet, has become day-to-day policing. Yet the expectation of visible policing in our communities remains as strong as ever.  Balancing these equally important aspects of operational policing is vital, but made even more challenging when you weigh-up the financial challenges facing all public services. 

One of my 2024 manifesto pledges was to increase the number of detectives in the Constabulary, because we need more specialist trained officers to be able to investigate those complex crimes and to bring more offenders to justice.  

Rapid Video Response is currently being implemented into the Constabulary. This technology is a virtual policing response available to victims of domestic abuse and means they receive the same service as they would if an officer attended in-person - but without any delay. It will improve initial response times for non-emergency domestic abuse calls and thereby improve safeguarding and the service to victims. This is due to funding from the Home Office, which my office was successful in bidding for. In fact, during my time as your PCC, my office has acquired an additional £16m in Government funding to target, reduce and prevent crime. Unfortunately, though, they are just one-off allocations for ring-fenced issues. 

As policing budgets remain under pressure, the degree of challenge varies between forces. PCCs and chief constables face difficult choices, but the Constabulary’s Temporary Chief Constable and I are committed to providing the best police service possible.