Devon and Cornwall Police and Crime Commissioner Alison Hernandez faced a grilling over PCSOs when she attended the Kingsbridge Town Council meeting.

Ms Hernandez attended the full council meeting of Kingsbridge Town Council on Tuesday, October 10. She called the town “a nice safe place to be” and said the “community is so welcoming” when she held a ‘Meet Your PCC’ event in September last year.

Ms Hernandez said: “The Police and Crime Plan, sets the priorities for policing for the term of office of the PCC and ‘better connecting policing and communities’ is the central theme through it. We’ve had a year of me listening to communities and going out a lot and now we’re at the point of delivery now.

“The other part of my role is around funding. The size of the policing budget for Devon and Cornwall is £283 million, we have reserves of about £69 million, which I have started unpicking and using as revenue to help increase the number of police officers on the front line.

“We’re below 3,000 officers at the moment, and I’ve supported the Chief Constable with his transformation of increasing the amount of officers by 100, by increasing the number of police staff investigators - starting to recruit civilians into the detective roles because its a challenge to recruit detectives, because you get less shift allowance its not as attractive a job as it used to be.

“I also supported the Chief Constable because he brought in telephone statementers, people who can take statements over the phone. Some of the things we do in policing at the moment are very archaic.

“They’ve only had in the last year mobile data unit with information they can use to allow them to access information without having to go back to the station.”

She then turned her attention to the reduction of PCSOs, Police Community Support Officers, and why she supports the reduction.

Ms Hernandez said: “I don’t know if you’ve met many response officers who can’t get a break, can’t get annual leave, because they really are strapped for numbers and working at pressure. Neighbourhood teams are being brought in to actually do response jobs, so the way to protect Neighbourhood teams is to bring in more officers.

“Also, because we’re not making PCSOs redundant, we’re keeping the talent in the organisation. They have been enabled to easily apply to become police officers and police staff investigators and we’re doing natural turnover.”

She said “accessibility of policing is my absolute priority, not visibility, so I want to make sure communities know how to access policing when they need it”. She also spoke about 999 response times and said “I already know that if you live in Plymouth, its around 10 minutes, and it can be 30-40 minutes in some of our rural areas”, something she says she’s “not sure” if she’s “happy with”.

Cllr Barrie Fishman said he knew of issues with people using the 101 service and being left on hold for long periods of time.

Cllr Robin Griffin asked: “Several of us have taken part in the Have Your Say exercise, when we’re out on the street listening to Kingsbridge people, that we then discuss with the Sargent and with the team.

“And I have to say that the point of view that you have adopted is firstly doctrinaire, in that you’re decided that PCSOs won’t do the job for this town, and secondly you are rejecting what local people say, which is that we want to see people around that we know it keeps crime down, we ask them thing, we tell them things, with an informal exchange of information and it seems that you haven’t listened to any of those surveys, you haven’t listened to those of us who talk to you, and what you’ve decided is that you’re going to do away with PCSOs and you’ll have officers, waiting in an office somewhere, waiting to be ‘connected’ in some way, with people who don’t use computers or phones and so on.”

Ms Hernandez insisted that PCSOs were “not being made redundant” and that the “PCSO role will continue”.

Cllr Chris Povey said: “I do think everyone around this table can identify their PCSO and has had contact with them, and I think that goes for all the community around here and it is really critical because it is about that grass-root level of information and I appreciate if you’ve got officers dealing with sexual crime cases, whether you can dial them up on Facebook, whatever that ‘communication’ strategy is, I don’t think there is anything presently that I have read or seen that could replace what the PCSO role delivers in this community.”

You can watch a video of the whole Kingsbridge Town Council meeting below, including Alison Hernandez between 7.30 and 44.15 minutes of the recording.

Timings for the video:

Public Open Forum: 0.02.32

Alison Hernandez, Police and Crime Commissioner: 0.07.30

Police Report, Sgt Dave Green: 0.44.26

Report from Devon County Councillor Julian Brazil: 0.55.09

Report from South Hams District Councillor Keith Wingate: 0.57.25

Urgent Business, including Jades and Feoffees: 1.10.10

Minutes of Previous Meeting: 1.21.52

Planning Committee: 1.22.54

Property Committee: 1.30.50

Bus Station: 1.39.40

Town Clerk’s Report, including Neighbourhood Plan: 1.54.46