Coalition plans - more than just cuts (From Daily Echo)

Coalition plans - more than just cuts

5:57pm Friday 2nd July 2010 in Chief Superintendent 's Blog By Matthew Greening, Chief Superintendent

Teresa May

The Home Secretary's speech to senior (more senior than me!) police officers this week set out some clear messages for the service and the cuts we have to face.

I am sure you can look out for some Echo headlines on police cuts like the recent ones on council cuts.

But there was more in the speech than just about the money, or lack of it.

Theresa May also talked about giving people more influence over policing and holding us more accountable locally and less accountable to Whitehall bureaucrats. Fine by me.

That includes plans for locally elected Police Commissioners. Just to be clear, that doesn't mean local police senior officers (me!) or Chief Constables being elected.

What it does mean is that one person will be elected to cover the whole of Hampshire and Isle of Wight and it will be their job to set the police force budget, agree plans and priorities as well as having to appoint the Chief Constable.

When they come into effect then the current Police Authority will cease to exist.

Local influence over policing already happens in many ways and if you want to have a say in what happens in your neighbourhood then get in touch with your local team.

You can find them through our website.

This week we also had the first meeting of the new Southampton Police Independent Advisory Group. A team of local community members coming together to advise us on how we can make policing in the City better.

I was very encouraged by the first meeting and I hope we can have some very frank and helpful advice from these new 'critical friends'.