Save Lancashire's Community Policing - Lord Tony Greaves tells the Government (Pendle Liberal Democrats)

Pendle Liberal Democrats <info@pendlelibdems.org.uk>

Save Lancashire's Community Policing - Lord Tony Greaves tells the Government

November 7, 2010 8:19 PM

Liberal Democrat Lord Tony Greaves took the fight for Lancashire's 400-plus police community support officers (PCSOs) to the House of Lords on Monday when speaking in a debate on the Government's Comprehensive Spending Review.

Lord Greaves said that PCSOs are "the basis of an extremely successful community policing system in Lancashire" which he said was "a pioneer of modern community policing". He said: "PCSOs are there on the ground doing what everyone wants when we talk about bobbies on the beat".

Lord Greaves told the Lords that the police authority in Lancashire has started a formal 9-day consultation process with a view to disestablishing all 427 PCSO posts from 31st March 2011.

He said: "The basic problem is that the PCSOs are all funded by specific grants to the police authority rather than from the police authority's general budget. If that grant was taken away…the police authority will find it impossible to fund the £10.5million a year that the PCSOs cost."

Lord Greaves said of the PCSOs: "They act as friends and support for residents. They do an enormous amount of useful work in the community among traders, schools and wherever there are problems. They act as the eyes and ears of the police in the community. There are residents meetings called PACTs as well as a community safety partnership involving councillors, residents, traders and voluntary groups. It is incredibly successful. It works."

He added that these are front-line services - "the front line of the thin blue line, if you like" - and they are the big society, because the whole community is involved in what is going on.

"Community policing has been a Liberal Democrat talisman policy for man years; the Conservatives have always stood as the ;arty of law and order. I do not believe that a Government consisting of Liberal Democrats and a majority of Conservatives can possibly tolerate a situation in which the incredibly successful scheme that has been created in Lancashire in the past few years is done away with."

Lord Greaves said he would continue to use every chance he had to press the Government not to destroy community policing in Lancashire, and would seek to work with local Lancashire MPs.