Hello

Last week, I was honoured and humbled to be re-elected as Police and Crime Commissioner for a fourth term.

I wanted to start this week’s newsletter by thanking everyone who put their trust in me and also to reassure all Sussex residents that I will continue to be your strong voice in policing, regardless of how you voted.

One thing that all the people I spoke to during the campaign agreed on was the importance of visible local policing. I am delighted that Sussex Police has made huge efforts to recruit record numbers of police officers with a headcount now of 3,245.

Performance is starting to improve - total neighbourhood crime is down 23% and residential burglary down by 33% compared to 2019. The investment in more call handlers, in training and new technology also means that Sussex has topped the 999 and 101 call-handling tables with 98.1% of all 999 calls being answered within 10 seconds.

In my acceptance speech, just before I signed the Oath of Office, I outlined how I want to see Sussex Police’s performance continue to improve right across the board and I will be refreshing my Police and Crime Plan over the coming weeks to make sure the public’s priorities are understood and addressed by Sussex Police.

Over the next four years...

I will be focussing on the areas that local people and businesses tell me are important to them:

Maintaining police officer numbers and making policing even more visible to help tackle anti-social behaviour and reassure communities.

I want to see more done to make our roads safer - including setting up a Fatal Five Road Unit to address antisocial behaviour and speeding on our roads - whilst also working closely with the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership to reduce the numbers of those killed and seriously injured by half by 2030.

I want to continue our local and national work with police and retailers to make our shops a safe and pleasant place to work in and visit.

Ensuring that our Rural Crime Team have cutting-edge technology to upscale all crime-prevention activities, making them more effective and efficient. From smart surveillance systems, drones and night-vision monitoring, tech can be the ultimate ally in safeguarding farms and rural businesses which is why I am keen to ensure the team has what they need to undertake their roles effectively.

We will continue our work to ensure women and girls in Sussex can feel safe in public spaces, with police working alongside businesses and identifying predatory offenders.

As PCC, I will continue to provide accessible, quality-assured services for victims and survivors of crime and press forwards with our innovative programmes to tackle the behaviour of stalkers and domestic abusers. You can also read more about Immediate Justice and further reparative activities on my website.

I also want criminals to know that we won’t give them an easy ride in Sussex so we need to continue delivering successful operations against serious and organised crime gangs. Sometimes, police operations are not made fully public for security reasons but there is so much excellent work that goes unnoticed and unrecognised and I would really like to see and hear from more police officers in the media telling us about what they do and the risks their colleagues face every day.

Finally, I look forward to meeting many more residents over the coming months to hear concerns and to make sure everyone feels safer in Sussex.

Katy Bourne OBE

Sussex Police & Crime Commissioner