Police and Crime Commissioner sets out summer agenda to mark his first six months in office

Devon and Cornwall’s Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) is marking his first six months in office by setting out his summer agenda.

Tony Hogg, who was elected as the Conservative Party's candidate for Devon and Cornwall's PCC last November, has reinforced his promise to make a real difference in the new role. In an interview to mark his first six months in the job, Mr Hogg is pledging to spend the summer tackling priorities set out in his Police and Crime plan. With a new internal structure in place, he wants things to move quickly.

Mr Hogg says: “I am engaging with Health and Wellbeing Boards, local criminal Justice Boards and the Community safety Partnerships. I am putting forward an alcohol seminar this summer because I want to get on top of people’s thinking around alcohol and the night time economy.”

The Commissioner has spent considerable time with Police officers and staff since being elected in November, including a full night shift on patrol in Plymouth City centre. This highlighted the huge demand on policing resources.

“I want to do an awful lot on demand reduction on our police. We have less police, and we are going to have another funding round coming up in a couple of years time, and we need to be ready for that. So we need to look at partnership working, we need to look at the public playing their part, we need to look at collaboration, we need to look at  new ways of safeguarding, and we need to look at the policing model and commissioning. In all of that, together with specific things like alcohol and its misuse, we need to try and reduce the demand on policing because we have to face the future in a sustainable way.”

Mr Hogg has also confirmed that a comprehensive review of the OPCC’s internal structure is complete.

“I am perfectly happy to tough out the need to resource the team properly because we are taking on more and more than the Police Authority. We are going to do commissioning, which the Police Authority didn’t do. We are looking after victim services, which the Police Authority didn’t do. We are going to measure performance better. We are going to engage with the public better. I inherited a team of around 15 and we are engaging another 6 more people. That is a relatively small group in comparison to the police. We want to do the job better and I have to persuade my police and crime panel, and the public, why we need these numbers and why it is important. All of the issues should be supported by business cases and good argument.”

“I can see very clearly that there are a number of areas where we are going to make a significant difference and we are going to do things better than the old Police Authority.  I think primarily we are engaging with the public in a new way. We are going to give people a better say in their policing priorities. We are going to make it possible for them to have a better feel about policing. Now, some may want to engage with that, some may not, but at least I will be providing the avenue for engagement so that the public can comment on the priorities in policing.”

To help do that, Tony Hogg is marking his first six months in office by taking part in a live interactive web chat on his PCC website this Wednesday (May 22nd) at 4.15pm