PCC elections How the four candidates would tackle role
THE man most recently in charge of overseeing Avon and Somerset Police is urging voters to elect him for a second term today so he can continue his “eight-year plan” for the police – and not vote for what he has warned will be “18 months of stagnation” under a new police and crime commissioner.
Mark Shelford was elected in 2021, and is standing for re-election to the role today as the Conservative candidate.
In his three years in the role, Mr Shelford said he had led “a complete leadership and culture change within the police”. Mr Shelford, a former soldier, said: “My track record and everything is about keeping the community safe and focusing on the community.”
But with rising knife crime, a huge spike in shoplifting and a disenchanted workforce – 68% of whom claim they “do not feel valued” – has Mr Shelford done
enough? Lib Dem candidate Benet Allen thinks not and insisted more needed to be done to stop crime in the first place. The former deputy leader of the now-disbanded Somerset West and Taunton Council said: “Prevention, prevention, prevention: it’s so much cheaper than a cure.”
He said: “We need to restore relations between the community and the police.”
There are also too few police and community support officers, he warned. But he added: “I’m not going to make any commitments about having more police because there isn’t any more money. But I will be going to Whitehall and be banging on the drum.”
One area which he does not think is understaffed is what would be his own team if elected. Mr Allen said: “The police and crime commissioner’s office has 31 full-time staff; that’s a bloated office if ever there was one [...] The Liberal Democrats’ position on the police and crime commissioner is that the office is largely, if not completely, unnecessary.”
Green candidate Katy Grant, a former international aid worker, agrees more work is needed to improve the relationship with the community.
She said: “Despite all the improvements, police still need better training on how to interact with the community members who, yes, they are protecting but who they are also in a sense putting in a position of suspicion.”
She wants the police to take part in more “collective work” on the prevention of crime, particularly around knife crime. She said: “Being a [Bristol city] councillor has allowed me to work with service providers and those doing things in the community around those issues and around prevention.
“It’s helped me to see what kind of options the police have to work with all kinds of service providers to do more about it.”
She is also keen to strengthen policing of county lines, get better resources for neighbourhood policing teams in rural areas, have the police engage in collective work to eliminate traffic fatalities in both urban and rural areas, and support victims in cases of violence against women and girls through the prosecution process.
She said: “I think we need to ensure that women and girls are feeling safe in their homes and on the street.”
Labour candidate Clare Moody, a former Member of the European Parliament, previously stood for police and crime commissioner in Wiltshire in 2012, coming second.
If elected this time, she hopes to use the Police and Crime Plan, one of the police and crime commissioner’s legal duties, to tackle her priorities – one of which is prevent crime in the first place.
“Obviously when there has been a stabbing – and, dear god, we have had too many of them – we have to respond by finding the perpetrators and the offenders and they are charged and the weight of the law is brought down,” she said. “But a really important part of this job is prevention.”
She said that messaging and communication in schools was important, adding: “Young people are frightened, their parents are frightened for young people. A lot of the motivation for carrying knives is a lot of young people thinking other young people are carrying knives. But if a knife is being carried anyway, it’s a danger.
“We have to do everything we can to keep young people out of the criminal justice system.”