The Sussex Police & Crime Commissioner has laid out her three public priorities for the next four years.
Having been re-elected in May, Katy Bourne has until March 31 2025 to publish a new Police and Crime Plan.
The draft Plan 2024/28 is scheduled to be scrutinised by the Police & Crime Panel at its meeting on January 31 2025.
But Mrs Bourne shared an early look at what it will contain.
The priorities are: to improve public trust and confidence, relentless disruption of serious violence and organised crime, and to support victims, witnesses and communities.
She said: “We’re doing quite a lot of extensive consultation with members of the public to make sure that the Plan still reflects what they tell me matters to them in policing.”
The three priorities cover everything from making policing visible and answering calls promptly to reducing homicide, serious violence and knife crime and improving the standard of investigations.
Ian Hollidge (Con, Bexhill South) said there was ‘a fear of crime’ in his area.
But he felt that the Plan’s priority to make policing more visible to improve public confidence and tackle anti-social behaviour was ‘moving in the right direction’.
Bob Standley (Con, Wealden North East) called the plan ‘strategic and aspirational’ but wondered whether the priorities were deliverable within the resources available to the Commissioner.
Mrs Bourne admitted it would be ‘challenging’.
But she reported that new neighbourhood policing training was being brought in nationwide over the next couple of years, including visibility and tackling anti-social behaviour.
A Safer In Sussex survey is being run to help people to share their policing priorities.
