Category Archives: Surrey Constabulary Website Updates & Info.

Information on the latest updates to www.surrey-constabulary.com and any feedback and suggestions.

Surrey Constabulary Website

  By surreywebmaster | 28/11/2011 - 13:16 | Administration, SPRCA, Surrey Constabulary Website Updates & Info.
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Just to let you know that I have created a new page on the Surrey Constabulary website with the excellent pictures sent in by John Walters of Woking in the 1970′s to include policing the miners’ strike.

You can find the new page at – John Walters@Woking

I have also uploaded the pictures to the Album website which can be found at – http://surrey-constabulary.magix.net/  go to the front page and find the ‘John Walters – Woking’ folder at the top left hand-side just under Surrey Constabulary, click the link to view.

You will see that I have also uploaded other photos that we have received recently under ‘Reunions and Events’ – sadly three uploaded files are funerals…

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Police can’t make us feel safer if the thin blue line’s getting thinner

  By surreywebmaster | 02/04/2011 - 09:29 | In The News, Surrey Constabulary Website Updates & Info.
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By Michael Nicholson 7:00AM BST 02 Apr 2011

Surrey’s beleagured force typifies the malaise faced by Britain’s police, says Michael Nicholson.

Overstretched?: Police forces are being pushed ever more, says Michael Nicholson.Overstretched?: Police forces are being pushed ever more, says Michael Nicholson.

Our national police force is fundamentally flawed. The proposed cuts will simply compound the problem. Call it what you will but by the time the dust has settled, policing in this country will be barely recognisable. If you doubt it come to Surrey.

It is one of the wealthiest counties in the Kingdom. And as crime follows wealth it is now one of the most vulnerable. London based criminal gangs use the M25 and A3 trunk roads for easy entry and rapid escape and escape they mostly do. Our police force has one of the lowest detection rates in the country making a mockery of its motto “Making Surrey Safer. But according to our Chief Constable Mark Rowley, things are going to get worse.

His force is under the hammer. 20% of its budget is being cut across the board. But it is already broke, its finances so out of control that its projected debt could be well in excess of £25million. So he has decided on a brutal and irreversible way to balance the books. He is selling off police real estate, closing all the county’s local stations and selling them off to developers. The sale of just four buildings in Haslemere, Godalming, Farnham and Cranleigh alone, all prime sites, could fetch a combined total of over £10 million. And there are another twenty six stations up for grabs.

And this is the police force that gives its officers an extra £1000 a year to pay for petrol to and from work, at a cost of £15 million over the past ten years.

Under Rowley’s proposed “Centralisation of Command”, we will be left with just three stations based in Guildford, Staines and Reigate, twenty five miles apart from each other. In future all policing, including all emergency response units, will be directed from these centralised “hubs”.

The choice apparently is Bobbies or Buildings. We can’t have both.

In the Restructuring Plan, “Response Teams” will be on alert at the three Command Centres to react to emergency calls. But you might have to wait some time for them to arrive. Sirens screaming, blue lights flashing, they promise to be with you within fifteen minutes of your call. That will indeed be an improvement because current official response time figures for this county show that it is more often nearer sixty minutes.

Surrey police record for “quick response” is among the worst in the entire country and that’s official!  There are not enough coppers to go round. Soon, there will be even less.

Sir Denis O’Connor, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, in his report this week, claims that two thirds of officers are active “on the front line”. He reckons that over 60% are in such roles even if they are not visible. Is it possible to have an invisible front line ? Apparently we have one in Surrey.

At the last count there are around 1800 full time uniformed warranted officers employed here. But astonishingly, only some 450 are on the visible front line.…if that means being out there in the cold, rain and snow protecting life, liberty and property, described in the HMIC report as “in everyday contact with the public and who directly intervene to keep people safe and enforce the law”.

But of those 450 officers, only a third are available for duty because they are either on leave, (including maternity), at in-service training, on court attendance or absent due to the increasingly expensive habit of days off sick. That leaves just three hundred officers working their shift pattern. So, if my arithmetic serves me correctly and with Surrey’s population at around the one million one hundred thousand mark, we could have only one hundred officers available on call at any one time. That works out to one for every ten thousand people.

One in ten thousand is not a reassuring ratio and far, far below any of our European counterparts. They also have their national reserve forces, France’s Gendarmerie, Italy’s Carabiniere, to reinforce local policing whenever and where-ever they are needed. We have nothing of the sort, especially when extra help is needed in violent, drunken town centres on a Saturday night.

A recently published national survey revealed that the public’s trust in and respect of the police has fallen to an all record low. PC. Plod has lost the plot and all because, according to Sir Denis O’Connor and blatantly contradicting his own report, the police “have retreated from the streets… they should be more in touch with the very people they are meant to protect”.

Much the same complaint has come from another of our knighted policemen, Sir Ian Blair, the less than successful former Head of the Met. How ironic then that these remarks are made by the two former Chief Constables of Surrey who were, in no small part, responsible for Surrey’s current debt crisis. The one our Chief Constable has, much to his annoyance, now inherited.

We ridicule the police when they publish manuals on teaching constables how to ride a bicycle, as they did recently (use your brakes carefully when stopping) and their pampering advice to then to use lip balm and sun cream to protect them from the elements. But the real malaise is no joke.

If you doubt it, again I invite you to Surrey. We are that malaise write large.

Michael Nicholson is former Chief Foreign Correspondent of ITN.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8422067/Police-cant-make-us-feel-safer-if-the-thin-blue-lines-getting-thinner.html

See other posts on this blog also:

Perhaps Michael Nicholson Has Got It All Wrong Then?

here – Ooops – The Public Are Catching On…

and here - Responses to Michael Nicholson’s Recent Letter.

plus - Further Responses to Michael Nicholson’s Letter:

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Dorking police set to move in summer

  By surreywebmaster | 28/01/2011 - 19:29 | Surrey Constabulary Website Updates & Info.
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POLICE officers in Dorking could be working out of council offices from this summer, it has emerged.

An announcement on the plans is expected to be made next month, but an agreement has been reached and Mole Valley District Council (MVDC) is already preparing for the police to move in.

A consultation about the idea of selling off police stations and housing officers in alternative venues such as shopping centres, community halls or council bases was held across Surrey last year.

Surrey Police regards its current estate as out-of-date, overly expensive to run and not conducive to modern policing.

It suggested people were supportive of moves to bring more officers onto the streets at the expense of some police stations.

One of these police stations has been identified as the Dorking facility in Moores Road, and officers based there have backed a relocation to the MVDC offices at Pippbrook.

Only a few respondents to the consultation, held between July and September, insisted they needed to be at a police station when meeting officers.

Almost 1,000 people responded, and community halls and shopping centres came out as the most popular places to meet police, along with speaking to them while they are on patrol.

Coffee shops and leisure centres had also been suggested, but they proved unpopular in the consultation.

The exercise appears not to have altered the police’s original hopes to move to Pippbrook.

MVDC has budgeted for the police move in its plans for the new financial year from April, published this week, and the police have said they expect to make an announcement on the plans next month.

Cllr Ben Tatham, portfolio holder for finance and assets at the district council, said: “MVDC and Surrey Police have reached an agreement in principle for a future co-location of the two authorities at Pippbrook.

“Negotiations are currently ongoing, but it is hoped the move can be completed in summer 2011.

“Given both authorities’ commitment to the residents and businesses of the district, MVDC welcomes the opportunity to share space at Pippbrook and encourage an even greater and closer level of collaborate work in the future.

“The move into one building will also make better use of the public estate, providing greater value for money for taxpayers.”

Gavin Stephens, head of neighbourhood policing at Surrey Police, spoke of some of the advantages the relocation would bring.

“Sharing buildings with other local authorities will enable more joint activity in tackling local issues, particularly antisocial behaviour,” he said.

“Similar co-locations have proven highly successful in Runnymede and Woking and we have always been clear that co-location is at the core of our estates plan.

“We hope that the move will go ahead later this year.”

People in Leatherhead are set to be left without any front-counter services at all. The town’s police station in Kingston Road receives an average of just nine visitors a day.

For counter services, people may be forced to travel to Reigate, Epsom or Dorking.

The police believe not having to retain old buildings across the force could save it £2.4 million each year and allow the recruitment of 200 extra officers.

http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/s/2086509_dorking_police_set_to_move_in_summer

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Dog Section Page Update

  By surreywebmaster | 07/04/2010 - 21:09 | Surrey Constabulary Website Updates & Info.
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I have uploaded some more pictures, go to http://www.surrey-constabulary.com/#15 and click on Timber Wood’s picture to view some new pictures including a picture of former Chief Constable Brian Hayes with an armful of pups. 

All pictures also uploaded onto the album site, don’t forget to click ‘Album’ on the website toolbar to view all the pictures on the website and a whole lot more we did not have room for.

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New Pictures on the Site

  By surreywebmaster | 01/04/2010 - 20:35 | Surrey Constabulary Website Updates & Info.
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After a flying trip to the UK for the first time in almost three years, (and some quality time with our family and especially the Grandchildren who we surprised as they did not know we were visiting.   Our Grandson said, ‘I wish you had told us you were coming we could have been excited for a few days’ ….  bless!  Mum said, ‘that is why we never told you’ ..),  I am trying to catch up on lots of emails and pics for the website.  I have now managed to upload some more ‘Hoss’ Robinson pictures so go to http://www.surrey-constabulary.com/#30 and click on the link at the bottom of the page.  Will try and sort some more soon.  Regards.

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“The Dorking Boys”

  By surreywebmaster | 19/03/2010 - 19:22 | Surrey Constabulary Website Updates & Info.
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I have recently uploaded some very interesting photos from John Wright on ‘The Dorking Boys’ page of the website – www.surrey-constabulary.com  You will see Brian Cane as you have never seen him before, shown in his former life as a star musical performer!  Space is now at a premium so you will need to go to the Dorking Boys page and click on the link at the bottom of the page. This will open a new window with a .pdf file which actually displays the pictures very well – it is a fairly large file though so it may take a bit of time to load. 

Also, there is yet another new page entitled ‘Greenham Common’ to showcase some more great photos from the drawer of  ‘Grahame (Hoss) Robinson formerly Pc 1155 and proud of it!’  Grahame has sent in some further pictures that I am processing at the moment and I will add them in as soon as possible.  Some of the pictures have been uploaded onto the ‘Album’ site also and the rest will soon follow.  So keep checking the site out and I will keep updating it as and when you send in more photos and memories.  Regards. Denis

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