Neighbourhood Police
Neighbourhood Policing - Points of Contact
By
Jun 25, 2008, 14:12

As most of you will be aware one of the key aspects of my role within the Neighbourhood Policing Unit is to regularly evaluate the structures through which we deliver crime reduction and crime detection across the geographical area that we cover. As part of that process I would like to gauge your opinions on a slight change that I propose to introduce and I will expand further upon that below.

A crucial part of the national vision for Neighbourhood Policing is that residents in every area should know who their local Police Constable or Police Community Support Officer is and how they can be contacted. Whilst we have continued to make significant progress in this area I still feel there is a way to go and I have been exploring a number of options as I strive to make that happen.

I propose to split the 12 Community Action Team Police Constables into two teams of 6 with each team under the command of a Sergeant. The 6 Police Constables on one of the teams would be the nominated Beat Managers for a designated geographical area. I propose to link these geographical areas to the wards that will accommodate the new Cheshire East Council structure.

In practice this would see Sgt Russell Thomas supervising,

PC Mick Warren point of contact for Poynton

PC Dave Jackson point of contact for Disley and Bollington

PC Jo Winter-Wake point of contact for Macclesfield Forest

PC Dale Hawtin point of contact for Prestbury and Tytherington

PC Mark Pitts point of contact for Macclesfield Town

PC Matt Rowbotham point of contact for Macclesfield West   

Whilst the geographical areas are fairly large the important point to stress is that the individual officer allocated as the point of contact can call upon any resources that he or she requires to progress whatever issue or concern has been raised by residents in the area concerned. The same ability applies in terms of requesting assistance from any of our partner agencies via the Community Tasking and Co Ordination process.

As we move forward with the Cheshire East Council structure, the model described above matches each Beat Manager to the relevant set of Councilors for the same geographical area. The phone number and e mail address enable anyone to leave messages for these officers for all non urgent matters.

The second team of 6 Police Constables would be supervised by Sgt Paul Basford and would be required to provide support for each of the 6 Beat Managers. This type of ability to quickly escalate staff numbers in one particular location would be of huge benefit in terms of the day to day operational demands placed upon us.

In terms of the Police Community Support Officers I have no intention of making any changes to the roles and duties that they currently perform. The funding situation relating to PCSO’s safeguards the areas into which they are deployed and that scenario is serving us all very well at present. The proposals outlined above relating to the 6 Beat Managers ensure that the PCSO’s have got all of the help and support that they may require. In terms of escalation the PCSO’s can hand any relevant enquiries over to a Police Constable colleague should the need for the Constables powers be required to progress matters. That type of scenario also ensures that the two roles continue to compliment each other appropriately.

As always I am happy to address any queries, comments or concerns and look forward to reading your feedback in due course.

Regards

Gareth.