Neighbourhood Policing Week open letter

This week (17-23 January) is the first Neighbourhood Policing Week.  I want to take this opportunity to thank our hard working Neighbourhood Policing Teams (NPTs) for the amazing job they do.

Neighbourhood Policing Teams form the bedrock of high quality local policing. NPTs have the ability to prevent crimes and disorder, to reduce the fear of crime and harm and improve public confidence in the police.

You have told me consistently for two years you are unhappy with the lack of officers in NPTs. My focus is to ensure there is adequate resource allocated to Local Policing to keep your communities safe and deliver long term crime reduction. I welcome the government’s decision to introduce the Police Uplift Programme; the job now for me is to ensure those officers and staff are given the scope to police neighbourhoods and not be pulled into other areas of policing to back-fill gaps in other parts of the force.

I created the ASB Taskforce because there was a need to prioritise and focus on tackling issues, many of which had become almost unmanageable. My commitment is to recruit additional police officers; to continue my focus on Neighbourhood Police Teams and to ensure medium and lower level crimes are given the attention they require, to deliver the policing services you want and deserve.

I hope you will join me in showing your support for the policing teams that are out in your area every day making a real difference and making people feel safer.

Donna Jones
Police and Crime Commissioner for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight