Survey reveals how public struggle to see Beat Bobbies

MORE than half of people in some parts of England and Wales have not seen a “bobby on the beat” for a whole year, according to new analysis of a survey carried out for HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC).

Bedfordshire was the worst area for police visibility, with 60% of people saying they had not seen a uniformed police officer or community support officer on foot in the past 12 months. 

In Norfolk and Wiltshire it was 52% and 51% respectively.

Of the total 26,057 people questioned by Ipsos Mori on behalf of HMIC in the summer of 2015, the figure was 36 per cent. Just 28% said they were satisfied with the level of uniformed police presence in the area, and 86 per cent said it was important to have a regular police presence.

South Wales and London were among the best for police visibility.

Nextdoor, a social network for neighbourhoods, analysed the survey, which covered all 43 forces in England and Wales, to get a breakdown of the best and worst regions for police visibility.

Max Chambers, a Director of Nextdoor, who used to be a policing adviser to former prime minister David Cameron, said:  ”Finding savings in police budgets was necessary, but funding is distributed so unfairly that the cuts have effectively created policing wastelands.”

In the original survey, 52% of people said they were fairly or very satisfied with local policing in their local area, while just 17% said they were fairly or very dissatisfied. The others held no strong opinion or did not know.

According to Nextdoor, those living in the most deprived neighbourhoods were more likely to say they had seen a bobby on the beat.

Zuleika Payne, Chairman of South Yorkshire Police Federation, said: “Unfortunately that was always our fear from the outset that the public expectation of seeing a bobby on the beat won’t always be met. We are recruiting next year. We are not going to see the policing numbers that we saw before.”