Fortnightly update to the Police and Crime Commissioner - 12 May 2023

Chief Constable fortnightly update to the Police and Crime Commissioner

12 May 2023

Dear Police and Crime Commissioner, Philip Wilkinson,

I wanted to open this letter with a reflection of the incredible celebrations across Wiltshire to mark the Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. Be it the street parties, the picnics, the service at Salisbury Cathedral or indeed the honour of the visit to our county from the Princess Royal, last weekend was something very special indeed.

My thanks go out to all our communities for braving the weather to make sure it was a weekend to remember, and of course I know you share my gratitude to our officers, staff and volunteers who worked across the weekend to ensure our communities were able to mark this momentous occasion.

In terms of other recent policing activity, we are continuing our focused operational work in and across Swindon. While maintaining our business-as-usual response across the whole county, we have flexed additional resource into Swindon to ensure that, through a blended mix of community engagement, highly visible activity and proactive operations, we are tackling those who are causing the most significant harm to others. We will not tolerate the increase in violence, and we will bring perpetrators to justice.

In the first two weeks alone, this additional focus resulted in 193 focused patrols, 100 closure order checks, 83 bail checks, 28 stop searches and nine arrests. I will continue to monitor this increase in focus and of course provide you with further updates in due course.

I would also like to highlight other work which is also helping to keep our county safe. Our residential burglary detection rate of 9.7% is the highest we have seen in over a year, and we continue to see a 100% attendance at residential burglaries in line with our commitment to the public.

Whilst there is more to do in this area, I am delighted to report that our focus is yielding results. We recently arrested a serial burglar in Westbury who had been wanted for two years by five different police forces for burglary and theft-related offences. Our officers were able to recover stolen property of immense sentimental value, including war medals, and the offender has been recalled to prison. He will be charged with numerous offences in due course.

As well as working tirelessly to keep people safe in their homes, our officers, staff and volunteers continue to work together to create safer roads across the county. In the past fortnight, our Roads Policing Team have carried out 187 stop checks in the county area, of which a number of offences were identified including; 41 incidents of driving at excess speed, 29 driving with no insurance, 15 driving whilst using a mobile phone, 14 driving with no MOT and 10 driving without wearing a seat belt.

This proactive work alongside our Community Speed Watch Team (who in April issued 2,070 education letters in the county) is vital in sending a message of zero tolerance to those who use our roads in an unsafe manner.

Next week is the National Intensification Week, led by the City of London Police, to tackle Courier Fraud. Financial crime causes misery and ruins lives, and Wiltshire Police has an extremely hard working and dedicated team to both support victims and tackle this criminality. I have been reviewing our plans to support this intensification week, and they are robust and will ensure that we identify and arrest those engaged in this criminality.

This is a crime which I believe is under reported – it often targets our most vulnerable members of our community; victims sometimes do not know they have become a victim, and sometimes feel embarrassed that they have been a victim at all. My promise is that we want to help and support everyone. If people are concerned that they may have been a victim of financial crime, then please come forward and we will give you every support we can.

Finally, a number of weeks ago, I presented to you the Wiltshire Police ‘Plan on a Page’ which was my overall vision to ensure Wiltshire Police could continue on its journey to make sure we are consistently providing the best possible service. As part of this, I asked each member of my Chief Officer Group to commit to improvement activity over this financial year to support my vision.

It is essential that both you, our communities and stakeholders are able to see the very clear steps that we are going to take and are able to hold us to account to our commitments.

To that end, I have attached the full ‘Plan on a Page Bundle’, and I look forward to providing you regular updates through this update which – of course – will also be made publicly available.

Kindest regards,

Catherine Roper

Chief Constable, Wiltshire Police