Surrey residents are being invited to share their views about Government proposals to merge police forces in a survey launched today by Police and Crime Commissioner Lisa Townsend.
Under plans for police reform announced in January, the Government intends to scrap the current 43 force system in England and Wales and create larger regional forces in their place.
It would likely mean Surrey Police will disappear and be merged with neighbouring forces in Sussex, Thames Valley, Kent and Hampshire to form a regional ‘mega force’ in the south-east.
The Commissioner said she believes the plans would be a disaster for residents in Surrey, resulting in resources being diverted from local communities and neighbourhood policing being diluted in the county.
Although an independent review is being carried out to advise the Government on how to take the plans forward, the public are not being consulted meaning it’s unclear if there is wider support for the merger plans.
Takes a few minutes to complete
The brief survey only takes a few minutes to complete and will be open until Monday 17 August. You can fill it in HERE
PCC Lisa Townsend said: “I make no bones about it – I believe Surrey residents deserve better than this. We are the safest county in the south-east with no city and much lower crime rates than our neighbours.
“I am concerned that a merger with other forces would result in resources being pulled away from our communities to support higher crime areas leaving Surrey with a second-rate service.
“This is my opinion however and I know it may not be shared by everyone.
“But this is really important for the future of policing and although the Government are drawing the plans up, the public are not being consulted.
“I want to ensure the public of Surrey have a voice and that is why I am asking everyone to take a few minutes to fill out my survey and have their say.
“I will publish the results later this summer and share them with those who are making the decisions around force mergers.
“Police reform is absolutely necessary and of course we must continue to modernise. We face increasingly difficult threats from cyber and organised crime and we want to work with the Government to create better ways to tackle issues nationally.
“In my opinion, the creation of regional forces would not only be expensive and complex to deliver, but here in Surrey would result in the dilution of both the service our residents rightly expect and local accountability – particularly in light of the abolition of directly elected PCCs.
“I’m a firm believer that local policing needs to be left to local police forces to deliver. At a time when we need to rebuild public confidence in policing, my view is these merger plans will only distance our policing teams from the communities they serve.”
For further information about the proposals, you can read the Government’s white paper ‘From local to national: a new model for policing’:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/from-local-to-national-a-new-model-for-policing