Jo Coles, York and North Yorkshire Deputy Mayor for Policing Fire and Crime, has welcomed the publication of the government’s policing white paper, highlighting the opportunity it presents to make communities in York and North Yorkshire safer.
Jo Coles, York and North Yorkshire Deputy Mayor for Policing, Fire and Crime said:
David Skaith the Mayor and I are determined to do everything we can to keep people in our region safe and feeling safe.
We welcome the ambition behind national police reforms and the opportunity they present to make our communities safer.
North Yorkshire Police delivers effective policing across an area five times the size that of the Metropolitan Police, so we have to ensure these reforms are implemented fairly and in a way that makes our communities safer.
This is especially the case for our rural communities which don’t benefit from the same economies of scale as big city areas.
Over the coming weeks and months I’ll be looking at how to ensure we are safeguarding rural policing, maintaining strong and effective local accountability, while also building public confidence.
Total crime in York and North Yorkshire has fallen 3.4% in the last year, with 1,300 fewer victims of crime as a result.
The Deputy Mayor is meeting the Policing Minister later this week to ensure the challenges facing York and North Yorkshire communities are understood, in particular those around rural crime.
She will also call for the opportunities from devolution arrangements and the importance of strong local accountability to be fully acknowledged in the policing reform proposals as key drivers of public confidence