Your Opportunity to change Policing

On the 15th of November 2012 the election of the Sussex PCC (Police & Crime Commissioner) will take place. For the first time the electorate will have a direct say in policing. The Police Minister Nick Herbert said in a speech that this will be

"a new era in policing, when local people will elect a Police and Crime Commissioner for Sussex" .

Up until now the Sussex Police Authority has had this power; Who are they?, what do they do? I think most ordinary residents will be unable to answer that question.This will all change with the election, the electorate will be able to decide what Police force they want and how it operates. This is why I am putting my name forward to be chosen as the Conservative Party Candidate.

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Monday 12 March 2012

Police levy for the Night Time economy?

Familiar Scene
Currently the government are consulting regarding introducing a night time levy for Policing in areas where there is a high volume of alcohol related trouble. This would involve business’s that sold alcohol being levied money to pay for the additional Policing required in their area. In a recent Survey I conducted on my blog Anti-Social behaviour came top with alcohol related crime coming an equal second.

I think as always there are issues with the way the draft legislation is currently drafted, the civil service does need the grafting of the common sense gene, but leaving this aside, I do think there are merits to having a night levy and shifting the burden of paying for Policing from the Tax payer to the user.

The issue though for Sussex is the lack of Unitary Councils, Brighton would be an obvious case for introduction, but where there are District, Borough and County government structures you have issues of Rural and Urban mix, the current draft of the legislation says that it has to be District or Borough wide, this would penalise Rural Pubs when you want to keep them going as they are useful social hubs for communities.

I believe there is scope to introduce them to urban centres based on parish borders, but until the civil service looks at this with common sense then it will be an experiment without much practical value.  But any elected PCC should be working with government to craft legislation that works for the Resident, Customer and Proprietor.

4 comments:

  1. Kent & Lincoln university are doing a study on Night Time economy and its affects https://survey.kent.ac.uk/nightlife

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  2. While I agree that anti social behaviour, is unacceptable.

    I cannot agree with another stealth tax on our local pubs and inns. Would this not see mass closures, and with it job losses.

    When we are losing so many of our local pubs, this would be a death nail too far.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Martin, Thanks for your comment,

    The Night levy as currently drafted is not useful, what you want is a levy that can be used for a particular area based on the problem, not one that encompasses all the local pubs. There is nothing wrong from shifting the cost of policing from the tax payer to the user of the service which would be reflected in the price paid at the problem establishments. But as currently drafted, the legalisation would cover an entire District or borough which would take in Pubs that were not part of the problem, so until this is changed I would agree with you. I am lobbying to change the Legalisation so it can work parish by parish or ward by ward.

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Rt Hon Nick Herbert (Police & Justice Minister) & Paul Dendle

Rt Hon Nick Herbert (Police & Justice Minister) & Paul Dendle
Nick Herbert (Police Minister) meets Paul Dendle on the streets of Arundel