SIR — Once again West Somerset is paying the price for being a responsible well behaved law abiding area. The result as usual is to take away another police unit, this time the last traffic unit from Williton.
It is no use "the powers that be" hiding behind the smoke screen of the "It will be OK on the night" scenario. A copper is a copper and the more you have the less the crime.
The crime is in fact a lack of money, caused despite this Government's promises at the last election to commit more resources to the police. The reality is they have deliberately under-funded the shire counties. We are paying the price for their failure to deliver on town and city crime.
The Government are obsessed with ensuring counties like Somerset are forced to build houses we cannot accommodate, ruin our farming industry by their gutless policy towards Europe, and now ensure the villains have a free run in the countryside.
Break-ins are up by 11 per cent and violent incidents are up as well. That is just what we want to hear in a tourism area, as well as safely caring for our many pensioners and young families in our community.
We cannot sit by and do nothing, we will have to find ways of offsetting the problem with new imaginative ideas. Perhaps the district and parishes could join forces to buy a copper, pay special constables or use private security companies.
What really rankles with me is the hours we spend poring over paperwork with council officers trying to get funding into West Somerset. As fast as we get cash in, this Government moves the goalposts and we are fighting again for our share.
Under Inspector Rod Price the police here have done an excellent job considering the resources available, especially in the drug related field, but what kind of message is this sending to the local force on the blue front line?
The county council are likely to joist the Council Tax up by between six and eight per cent in May and the police are to add to that a further 11 per cent.
Money that should be spent on policing in West Somerset is part-funding the fight against crime in the inner cities. We are being left vunerable and empty-handed for being responsible and lawful.
Colin Hill,
West Somerset District Deputy Leader,
Somerset County Councillor.