New cops to be good neighbours
A “SIGNIFICANT chunk” of the new police officers being recruited in Lancashire will go into neighbourhood policing roles.
That was the pledge from the county’s police and crime commissioner, Rossendale’s Andrew Snowden, as he marked his first year in office.
While he said that the ever-shifting demand for resources across the county meant that he was unable to commit to the exact numbers that would be deployed in different districts, he said that his aim was to ensure that each of Lancashire’s 14 council areas had dedicated neighbourhood and response teams - so that the “proactive” work of local officers was not lost within the need to attend urgent call-outs.
Mr Snowden said that 999 and 101 calls to the force now “regularly” exceeded 2,000 a day - with 80 percent of calls to the non-emergency number not even being about issues that the police could or should be dealing with.
Lancashire is expected to have recruited 509 new police officers by next March - the county’s share of the 20,000 being taken on nationwide to replace the same number which have been cut over the last decade.
That would still leave Lancashire almost 250 officers down on its workforce tally from 2010.
But Mr Snowden said that he was using an increase in the police’s share of council tax this year to recruit an extra 50-60 personnel, something which had also been done in previous years.
He said that
Lancashire residents could therefore expect to see more than 600 new officers added to the constabulary’s ranks - with the remaining shortfall, compared to historical levels, being a reflection of the fact that policing had changed in the intervening years.
Mr Snowden said that he had front loaded recruitment of neighbourhood officers into the first phase of the recruitment campaign to ensure that their effects could be felt on the streets sooner.
The Local Democracy Reporter Service understands that the next intake of officers 120 of them - will come in July, with further tranches in October 2022 and January 2023.
The commissioner added that his pledge to end the “hybrid model” of the same officers being responsible for the neighbourhood policing and response activity was being rolled out across the county - with Rossendale already having a dedicated neighbourhood team back in place.