Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Hammer attack led to mother’s police chief bid
THE experience of seeing her son become a victim of a serious crime has fired Liz Webster’s desire to be Wiltshire’s next police and crime commissioner.
The 57-year-old, who lives and farms near Cricklade, is the mother of Henry Webster, who suffered a horrendous hammer attack when he was a pupil at Ridgeway School in the Wroughton area of Swindon in 2007.
The Liberal Democrat candidate for the job of setting policy and budgets for Wiltshire Police said that was when she started seeing what could be improved.
“It was a hugely difficult time,” she said. “My son was fighting for his life and it felt like I was alone and there was nobody to hear what I had to say. We had been saying to the school there was a problem with bullying and with gangs for some time, but it had been brushed under the carpet.
“That experience showed me how important it was to deal with problems early.”
If elected, one of Ms Webster’s policies is to have a closer relationship between the police and schools to try to prevent problems before they become serious.
She said: “Getting police officers into schools and building trust between schools and pupils and the police is the way to address tribalism and stop gangs developing. We need a new mindset when working with young people, and I think building a better relationship between them and the police will give them more aspiration, give them hope for a better future.”
Ms Webster has previously been a parish councillor and twice stood for Parliament for the Lib Dems – she was the candidate for North Swindon in 2017 and the Cotswolds in December 2019.
Both are Conservative strongholds, and, if elected, she will be working with seven Conservative MPs and two councils that have been run by Conservatives for years, as well as the Conservative Government.
She said this might give her an advantage: “I won’t have to toe the party line like I would if I was a Conservative. I’ll be able to say that we aren’t getting enough money, that the funding formula is unfair.
“Wiltshire is not the sleepy rural county it was – Swindon has grown hugely and is growing
again, but towns like Melksham are unrecognisable from 30 years ago. It was hugely disappointing we weren’t included in the ‘county lines’ funding. Wiltshire is the crossroads, from east to west and north to south – a lot of that criminal activity comes through Wiltshire.”
And she thinks her lone voice could make a difference: “Look at what Marcus Rashford has achieved. If you get public opinion behind you, you can get things changed. That’s one of the reasons behind my dog theft campaign – I know how much it matters to people.”
One of Ms Webster’s ideas is to make policing more visible by setting up empty shops in town centres as small police stations.
She said: “It’s so important for people to know where the police are. I was followed once when I was living in London and I was able to go to the station.
“There are a lot of empty shops in town centres. If you set up a couple of desks and computers and phones in one, officers could use that as a base on Friday and Saturday nights, so people know where they are, and they are seen.
“It will cut response times. You can still use Gablecross for the custody suite, but shopfront policing will make policing more visible.”
■ The PCC election will be held on May 6. Other candidates are the Conservative Jonathon Seed, Labour’s Junab Ali, Reform UK candidate Julian Malins and independent Mike Rees.