Three aim to become next PCC

The job of the county’s police and crime commissioner is to hold the police force to account and to scrutinise its performance. It comes with a salary of more than £88,000 and elections take place every four years. Here, the candidates vying for your vote

ALISON HERNANDEZ (CONS)

TACKLING rural crime and a radical solution to prevent domestic violence will be among Alison Hernandez’s top priorities if she is re-elected for a third term.

Eight years into the job, Ms Hernandez, 50, says she is only just getting started on many of her projects.

These include the crossborder operation scorpion to crack down on county lines drugs operations and the prisoners building homes programme.

“We are trying to sort out some of the problems in society and we are just getting started,” she said. “A lot of my energy during the last term has gone on operation scorpion and we have disrupted 4,000 drug operations in two years, working with the PCCS across the South West.

“Prisoners building homes took three years to get off the ground. It started in my force area of Torquay and now we have a regional housebuilding programme.”

Currently 82 homes are being built across 14 developments by the scheme set up to allow prisoners to be employed by modular housing providers to build low carbon, homes for local communities and vulnerable people. It aims to reduce reoffending by ensuring prisoners have the skills to help them get jobs when they are released.

“You need to understand the problem you are trying to solve, and in this case it is homelessness, because every time people reoffend the excuse is they haven’t got a home or a job and they go back into their old ways,” said Ms Hernandez.

Ms Hernandez, who previously worked in local and regional government heading community safety partnerships before taking over as PCC from her Tory predecessor Tony Hogg in 2016, cites her achievements as getting the number of police officers to a record high of 3,610, thanks to government funding and extra money from taxpayers.

She has added an extra £100 to council tax bills for police services in the eight years she has been commissioner.

Over the period, £5.5 million of safer streets funding has been used to improve CCTV and street lighting, and to help to make women and girls feel safer, particularly in Exeter and Plymouth. A partnership called Vision Zero South West has invested £5m in road safety.

Thirteen police station enquiry offices have reopened under her watch. Five more openings are planned this year.

With domestic violence on the increase and accounting for much of the violent crime in the region, Ms Hernandez says this will be one of her priorities if she is re-elected.

“We cannot just keep doing more of the same – that is helping victims to escape and supporting them to report. We need to do more,” she said. “If I can do what I did with Vision Zero by getting all the partners on board, I think I can do something similar to tackle domestic violence. There will also be a huge push to tackle serious and organised rural crime, the stealing of animals and property.”

And she said she knows people want police officers to be more visible. “I think they are more visible than they were, but people want more,” she said.

Ms Hernandez said she had delivered on her promises made in 2016 to make police stations open to the public after they were shut during the austerity years and to recruit more police officers.

“I have got a track record of doing what I say, and that is important,” she said. “I don’t think most people realise what this job does. I spend 50% of my time scrutinising the police and 50% trying to tackle crime, reduce crime and a lot of it has nothing to do with the police.

“Prisoners building homes, we started it here. It’s gone regionally and will go nationally in the next term. That is the sort of radical ideas we are coming up with to solve society problems.

“If you want someone like that, vote for me.”

DANIEL STEEL (LABOUR)

AFORMER diplomat is hoping his resilience and experience of working in some of the most challenging areas of the world will make him a good fit for the role.

Daniel Steel, 31, from

Plymouth, says he has public service running through his veins. His father was in the

Royal Navy and he has always wanted “to do his bit.”

“My values come from my dad, it is what has motivated me my whole life,” he said. “I want to put back more than I take out.”

He has served in countries such as Afghanistan, where he says his resilience and leadership were forged. He also dealt with challenging issues around refugee displacement, human trafficking and modern slavery whilst working at the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office.

“I spent a lot of my career so far working in difficult and dangerous places,” he said. “It allowed me to see what it looks like when the rule of law breaks down. I fundamentally believe the rule of law is the bedrock of our society and democracy. When you look at the alternatives of violence and chaos you see in lots of other places, we are really lucky that in the UK we have strong government systems and governance in our country.”

Mr Steel, who has had to give up his job as a civil servant because he is standing for office, hopes Labour will form the Government following the next General Election but he says in the meantime the PCC role is a chance to implement the party’s mission.

“One of Labour’s key aims is to take back the streets, with 13,000 more officers and police community support officers (PCSOS),” he said. “I was shocked that in Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly we only have 177 PCSOS. That’s one per 10,000 residents. It’s why we don’t have the community policing we expect and deserve as the public.”

Devon and Cornwall had almost twice as many PCSOS (346) in March 2015, a year before Ms Hernandez took over as commissioner. Many subsequently became police officers.

“If I am elected, my number one priority on day one is to reestablish community policing. Too many police officers unfortunately are having to work behind desks because the force does not have the right mix of staff,” he said. “Alongside the acting chief constable and the senior team, I would be looking how we can increase police staff to free up officers so they can be working on the streets, not on spreadsheets.”

Mr Steel said members of the public he had talked to linked problems of antisocial behaviour and burglaries directly with a lack of visible police presence.

“It’s not the fault of police, it’s a result of all political decision making by the Conservative government and PCCS,” he said. “Policing was cut to the bone and the force has lost years of valuable experience from those officers who went during the cuts.”

Mr Steel has also pledged to tackle violence against women and girls, prevent youth crime and reduce reoffending, boost crime prevention and victim support, and back a crackdown on illegal sewage dumping. A few years ago, he was the victim of a knife crime and said the traumatic experience had stayed with him. He says it has given him the ability to empathise with victims of serious crime.

He said he had made a career out of bringing people together. And he added that his work as a diplomat was similar to being a politician: “I have represented the UK and spoken on its behalf with ministers and other diplomats around the world to make sure I was delivering for the UK’S people.

“The PCC is a challenging role but an important one. It covers an enormous region. We are diverse in terms of population, rural, urban, different politics and I will be acting in a fair and even-handed way and do my best to serve the residents across the region, however they vote.”

STEVE LODGE (LIB DEM)

ABUSINESSMAN and accountant says his financial background and governance experience – he has been vice chair of the Federation of Small Businesses in Mid Devon – together with his knowledge of business, are suited to being commissioner.

And, Steve Lodge, 53, from Tiverton, believes the fact he has no background in policing is a good thing, enabling him to bring “creativity, innovation and acumen to the job, without any baggage”.

Mr Lodge runs a marketing and communications agency and has been in business for 25 years. Before that he was an accountant at IBM and Marconi.

“I watched politics from afar. I am a lifelong Lib Dem voter, but never really considered going into that area and I was concentrating on my business,” he said.

“I now have the opportunity to step back a bit and it feels like time for a change.”

Bumping into Lib Dem Richard Foord, MP for Tiverton and Honiton and Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey during a PR job at Tiverton High School, sealed the deal.

“I was inspired by them to make the world a fairer place, and thought that’s something I would like to do,” he said.

Mr Lodge wants to see “a proper return to community policing” with more bobbies on the beat, and to bridge the gap between the police and the public as he says “trust has been eroded”.

He wants what he calls “fairer funding” and “smarter spending” so police have the resources to fight crime, and to support rehabilitation and restorative justice.

He said national police funding levels were the same last year as in 2011.

“You have to question how the police can work properly with this amount of underfunding,” he said.

Mr Lodge believed he could “add value” to the new police and crime plan in 2025 and wants more of a multi-agency approach.

He said many people, charities and local authorities, who do “fantastic work” on crime prevention and in areas like mental health, are unsung heroes.

He feels the police needed “to be more joined up”. All the force could do is to respond to crime and teach rookie officers the basics, he said.

The biggest issue right now “hands down,” behaviour, he believes.

“It’s something I am hearing when I knock on every door,” he said.

“In Truro, shopkeepers are subject to verbal abuse. People think they can just walk in and steal what they like.”

He added: “If we can provide common sense to politics and to being the police and crime commissioner, we will resolve a lot of the problems we have currently.”

Looking through documents from 2012, when the police and crime commissioner’s office was set up, he saw something on youth crime which made a lot of sense but hadn’t been implemented.

“It was created by the Conservatives and it said for every pound you spend on youth crime you save the country £2.50,” he said. “If I could walk into bank with £1 and come out with £2.50 I would be a happy man, but what happened?

“Investment in youth crime was slashed. Investment in the police was slashed.

“If we invest properly in our public services, we will deal with the issues we have, but for some reason politicians just don’t see it.”

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