Paul Dendle annouces intention to stand as Conservative Candidate for Sussex Police Commissioner

Cllr Paul Dendle

I have announced today my intention to put my name forward to stand as Conservative Candidate for Sussex Police Commissioner.

The Conservative party in Sussex will decide soon the electoral process to select Candidates and this will lead to selection of a Candidate  by May 2012 with the election taking place on the 15th of November


 I am the District Councillor for the Arundel Ward and Cabinet Member for the Environment on Arun District Councillor as well as being Conservative Sussex Area Chairman responsible for the 16 Associations and liaison for the 13 Sussex Conservative MP's.


I believe that The Role of Police Commissioner is a critical Community role as  Law and Order is one of the fundamental precursors to a Civil Society.

The new elected Police Commissioner will have to have the drive foresight and proven ability to make the changes that are desperately needed, the Status Quo isn't working.  I believe I am that person,  

I was elected to Arun District Council in 2003 and joined the Cabinet in 2006, as Cabinet Member I have been successful in improving the customer offering to Arun's residents by rationalising the office estate from 8  to 5 buildings, boosting customer contact through the Internet from 15 to 65% and digitalising the majority of the councils documents.

As a business man I set up Avro Plc with a staff of two in 1984 and over the next eleven years built the company to be the largest seat only company in the UK. and the UK's fourth-largest tour operating company. We turned over 140 million pounds, flew 1.2 million passengers and achieved a net annual profit of over 4 million pounds.  I sold the majority stake in the company to Monarch Airlines in 1991 and left the company in 1995 after the earn-out period..  

The current policing situation is not acceptable or desirable, when you only have 14% of Police officers on duty at any one time, so the elected Commissioner will have to forge a new kind of policing relying on community involvement.

I am conscious of the founding principles set by Robert Peel when he created the first Police force and this has to be a starting point to any strategy of improvement.

Policing in the UK has always been by consent and the basic mission for the police is to prevent crime and disorder. The challenges of the future are to put those principles in a future context with all the complexities of the Human Rights Act and the needs of very diverse Communities. 

Our Police forces are top down control and command organisations, this makes them un- receptive to change and inefficient, If elected this is something I will work to change by empowering font line staff and release them from the paper-chase bureaucracy which will improve efficiency and morale.