POLICE performance in Wiltshire is getting worse in many areas including stalking and harassment according to the latest police and crime plan.
Of the 66 measures of Wiltshire Police performance, which describe how well police deal with crime, 28 are declining, 37 are improving and one is unchanged according to the report discussed on Thursday 9th March at the Wiltshire Police and Crime Panel.
The police’s performance in reducing violence and serious harm is one of the areas most seriously in decline. Times to charge for rape and sexual assault are still almost 45% higher than last year and formal action taken in cases of stalking and harassment cases has decreased by around 5%.
The Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Philip Wilkinson was grilled on the performance decline by a series of councillors.
Cllr Steve Bucknell said, “To see that these levels are declining means those areas are worse than when you took over as PCC which means the ship is going completely the wrong direction, is that right?”
However, Philip Wilkinson said in response, “Many of the reforms that we have been putting in place in the last year are just about to come to fruition. When you put a whole new series of training courses then those people need to go through those courses and then get back out in the field and apply their new knowledge and then you will start to see the improvement in performance.
“We are monitoring all of that very carefully and we’ve seen huge improvements in speed enforcement. We’ve seen big improvement in the area of rape and sexual assault. We are getting much better at dealing with domestic abuse, we are getting much better and on anti-social behaviour we have had some serious successes in Wiltshire.”
The police have taken much more formal action on rape and sexual assault cases, with a 65.8% increase since last year, but the time to charge for those cases is still 44.7% higher than last year.
“Am I confident that things are going to get better? Yes, I am,” Wilkinson added. “I would hope that by the end of the year we are out of special measures, but we will see. Across the year there will be improvements in a whole raft of areas that will gradually build up.
“I hope that by the end of this year we will see far more positive indicators and very very few areas where we are not delivering. There will be some, but we will overall be a much better force by the end of this 2023.”
Pictured: Philip Wilkinson.
