Avon and Somerset Constabulary has offered reassurance that the relocation of Frome’s police patrol officers to Shepton Mallet will not affect response times to emergencies in the area.
About 20 patrol officers from Frome, who respond to 999 and serious 101 calls, will move to a new police station at Haskins Retail Centre in Shepton Mallet’s town centre.
The new station is expected to open in the summer/autumn this year and will be the base for the patrol team for the entire Mendip area.
Frome’s local neighbourhood policing team and enquiry office on Justice Lane will remain unaffected by the changes.
In response to questions from Frome Times about the impact the changes could have on response times to emergencies in Frome, a spokesperson for Avon and Somerset Constabulary said, “Patrol officers are the officers who spend their time responding to the 999 and serious 101 calls. They cover the whole Mendip area, rather than one town. Currently these officers are based in different stations across the area, but we will be housing them all in one regional base going forward to help us respond to these calls.
“This won’t change the work that they do. They will start their shift at the new station and then work across the area using laptops to complete any administration and reporting tasks.
“Across our force area we have started moving our patrol officers to regional bases and have found this has had no effect on how quickly we respond to calls and the service we provide.
“The patrol officers for the whole area will be briefed at the new Shepton Mallet police station, but at the start of the shift will be deployed to the areas where we are needed that day. As now, they will spend their shifts responding to calls from the community. With our new laptops and mobile technology they will not need to return to the station until the end of their shift.
“The closest officers will be sent to an incident, which may include officers from other police stations. This way of working means we can be more flexible and that a larger pool of officers are available to attend 999 and 101 calls. Therefore we do not expect to see any negative impact on our response times.
“The local neighbourhood policing team is made up of police officers and PCSOs [police community support officers] who work in the local community. These are the officers you might see around the town, at community meetings etc. They have responsibility for ongoing issues, like the recent arson series and work with partners and the community. They also respond to some 101 and 999 calls for the town. These officers will continue to be based in Frome.
“Therefore there will be no difference to the service to our communities in Frome.”
The news has been cautiously welcomed by Frome’s mayor, cllr Richard Ackroyd. “On the face of it there doesn’t seem to be any reduction in service but as always the devil is in the detail,” cllr Ackroyd told Frome Times.
“It could be argued that police forces are already stretched as they have to respond across the whole of Mendip and Frome has sometimes already been left with only a minimum police presence at times under the current set up. It may just be that Frome would benefit from having a larger number of police officers stationed closer to the town than would be the case at present.
“Generally I have a lot of sympathy for our local police officers who seem to be faced with ever larger cuts to resources and larger case loads – not an enviable situation. Ideally, more police officers on the beat and based locally would be my favoured option, but this may not be possible at the moment. I’m no expert but the status quo isn’t really working brilliantly, so overall this appears to be an imaginative and perhaps sensible re-organisation of scarce resources given the current national austerity measures.
“To repeat, in an ideal world I would want a fully staffed police station based in Frome, but given that such a possibility is extremely unlikely, the new ‘flexible working’ ideas where police officers make better use of lap-tops and do their ‘paper work’ out in the community, coupled with the new HQ in Shepton, might have to be the next best thing for now at least.”
