Powys police officers are to take a "bobbies on the beat" approach to local policing in a UK-first scheme which will mean local cops are no longer asked to respond to reports of crime.
Dyfed-Powys Police have announced a new Community Policing Strategy which will see Neighbourhood Policing & Prevention Teams (NPPTS) more visible in the community and working on preventing crime by not asking them to respond to urgent calls.
The force believe that officers from other teams - such as roads policing - will be able to respond to incidents instead, and that a pilot version of the project has already paid dividends elsewhere in the force area.
“We recognised in the last few years we are continuously trying to respond to crime incidents,” said Superintendent Chris Neve.
“What we have also recognised that general policing demand is on an upward trajectory and that is becoming ever more complex.
“This new approach will have renewed focus on problem solving."
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More than 150 PCs and PCSOs assigned to neighbourhood teams who will be “protected from responding to day-to-day calls” in favour of increased visibility on the streets of Powys towns.
To cover the shortfall of community officers responding to calls the force will expand the duties of road policing units.
“Roads policing officers are supporting the response to incidents as opposed to focusing on just road policing matters,” said Superintendent Neve.
“Independent research shows that if you just continue responding to calls the demand will inevitably plateau or go up – it will rarely come down – because of complex issues in society it will continue to breed and get out of hand.
“We will still aim to meet our response targets specifically in Powys where it is a challenge due to the rurality to make immediate calls in 20 minutes, priority response calls in an hour.
“But if we don’t protect this, demand isn’t going to come down and communities are going to continue to experience harm.”
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Officers will respond to problems brought to their attention by the public and partner with other agencies.
Officers will meet both with the public and with members of the community such as local councillors and community leaders.
There will also be “meet the street” in areas where communities are raising concerns.
“For example where a call comes in three times or more for any location or person in a month we mandating those NPPTs make a plan with multi-agency partners," added Supt Neve.
"This could include mental health support workers, drug or alcohol support or housing officers with the local authority.
“There is an onus on us to perform, the last thing I want is for us to be saying these things today and a year from now we don’t fare well form the community feedback or from our HMIC inspection.”
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Until March next year, the force will also benefit from a £1 million cash injection from the Home Office known as Operation Ivydene, which will see increased patrols from officers on overtime or days off.
This will be aimed at 10 areas including Newtown East and Brecon.
“In the last six weeks we have seen 830 hours of additional patrols, this has led to five arrests, 21 spot searches with 42 per cent of those being positive,” said Superintendent Neve.
“This has seen an overall reduction of 17.5 percent in anti-social behaviour across the force area in a time of year when you would normally see an increase.”
There will also be an expansion on the police’s work with young people with 14 full time officers working with schools on early intervention, Work with colleges which will focus on age specific issues such as drink spiking – with visits offered every other week.
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