Cllr Bell is not spelling out clearly what the council contributes to policing. Last year the council spent £1 million jointly funding a team of 43 police officers (1 inspector, 2 sergeants and 40 PCSOs) and another £70K funding two officers to work on our housing estates. A total spend of £1.07 million to fund 45 police officers. In the current financial year Labour proposes to spend just £660K to fund 19 police officers (1 inspector, 9 PCs and 9 PCSOs) as Cllr Bell mentions in his reply. So in plain, honest English, using the maths of normal people, the Labour council has cut its revenue spending on policing by 38% and reduced the headcount by 58%. They will argue, rightly I think, that the PCs are more useful than PCSOs and that they plan to work more closely with the police which should partially counteract the impact of this massive change. But, this massive cut is way out of proportion to the 12.5% cut the council is having to deal with and ignores what the council already knows about residents' concerns. If you check out the residents survey, here, you will see that residents’ single biggest concern is “Crime: including anti-social behaviour and terrorism”. This is cited by 20% as a personal concern, top of the list with the next biggest concern being cited by 15%. Labour are quite aware of this concern and even put crime in number one spot on their list of five key pledges in their manifesto:Cllr Bell seems to believe he can get away with telling half the story in order to somehow make it look like he is keeping his manifesto promise.
Phil Taylor ● 5386d