Monday 24 January
Today I sign off the Budget. Hooray! It feels like a chapter in my life is closing. This has been going on for weeks with endless meetings and page after page of financial figures to digest, query and tweak.
At last it is finished. I must thank all those involved in helping with this process, including Kira [Acting Chief Financial Officer in the OPCC], the Chief Constable and Deputy Chief Constable, plus Mr Dawkins. I genuinely believe that this is a cracking budget which will give the police force the financial muscle they need to make our streets safer for everyone who lives and works in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.
I then meet on-line with the Leicestershire Police Federation officials to talk about officer welfare. We have a very interesting chat, which I will be chasing up over the coming weeks.
Finally, I meet with Janine, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service in the East Midlands. We talk about how the police and CPS can co-operate more effectively in the future. She agrees to my request to shadow a couple of her lawyers for a day in the near future. That could be interesting.
Tuesday 25 January
I’m off to London for the day. I start in the House of Commons meeting with Gary Sambrook MP, a Birmingham MP who sits on the Home Affairs Select Committee. We discuss the issues surrounding redaction and the delays in the court system as well as talking about the situation in Parliament and “cakegate”.
I also meet with Andrew Bridgen, MP for North West Leicestershire, to discuss his concerns over crime affecting businesses that are boosting employment in his constituency. After lunch with Home Office officials, it is over the Thames to head for an environmental think tank who want to talk to me about finding ways to make the police more environmentally friendly through using electric police vehicles, insulating police buildings and using greener energy sources. I finish off by meeting an official from the London Fire Brigade. There is talk that PCCs might be tasked with taking over the Fire Brigades, so I thought I would learn a bit about that.
On the train back to Leicester I find myself in the same carriage as Neil O’Brien, MP for Harborough. We have a chat about the Levelling Up agenda. I get home at 10pm dead beat. I call in a takeaway and go to bed.
Wednesday 26 January
Today is mostly taken up with interviewing applicants to sit on the new Ethics and Transparency Panel. We have had a lot of people applying, but have done a CV sift and shortlisted 10 people for the 7 spaces available – with two more in reserve. On the interviewing panel are: Robert Nixon [Deputy Chief Constable], Cllr Deborah Taylor [Chair of the Police and Crime Panel], Nupur from the OPCC who handles complaints against officers and myself.
We kick off at 9am by agreeing what questions we will ask the applicants. Mr Nixon seems especially keen on giving them a grilling. Then the first victim, I mean applicant, arrives at 9:30 and we are off.
We take a break after four interviews so that Nupur and I can attend the OPCC Team Meeting – a weekly ritual that brings us all together so that we can discuss what our team is up to – then it is back into the interviews. Mr Nixon and Cllr Taylor have used the break to drink tea, eat biscuits and catch up on emails – lucky them. By the end of the day we find that we have identified six excellent candidates for the Panel. The other four were perfectly acceptable, but to be honest I was looking for a little bit more diverse thinking, as it were. We decide to meet again to interview the two reserve applicants before making a final decision.
Thursday 27 January
This week my Community Thursday is in Hinckley and Burbage. Sophie [who organises these trips] and I start with breakfast in the Country Crust Café which fully lives up to its name with some deliciously crusty bread to go with my scrambled eggs.
Then we are off to Clarendon Park to meet Cllr Michael Mullaney. He tells us about the park and its popularity, but also about problems with anti-social behaviour and the fact that it is avoided after dark by women and girls concerned about their safety. My staff at the OPCC have won funding from the Home Office to improve safety in open spaces of concern to women and girls – part of the “VAWG Agenda”. Here that means new CCTV cameras. Cllr Mulvaney and I decide to shoot a short video about the project. I fluff my lines repeatedly, and then a workman starts up with a loud drill. We eventually get it right on about the tenth attempt. Over to Burbage to meet Cllr Amanda Wright-Kluger who is concerned about ASB at the local allotments. She shows me the allotments and explains the issues. She also wins herself a gold star by buying us a cup of tea.
At 1pm we return to Hinckley to meet PCSO Phil Wayne to go out on patrol in the town centre. First I have a chat with Inspector Jamie Osborne about the general situation in the NPA. Stepping out with PCSO Wayne our first stop is the CCTV centre where I chat with Mick. He shows us footage of a punch up in the town that took place earlier that day. PCSO Wayne watches the event unfold, then points at the young man who threw the first punch. “Oh, I know him” he says, then calls in to report the incident and ask for the suspect to be pulled in.
We then potter up Castle Street as PCSO Wayne chats to shoppers. We drop in on a shop which recently suffered a spate of shoplifting. PCSO Wayne tells the delighted manager that a suspect has been arrested and several hundred pounds worth of stock has been recovered. We then head into Britannia Arcade where the landlord has been persuaded to lend the police an empty unit for a few weeks to serve as a base for public drop-ins. The shop is opening on 1 February check my diary, but sadly I am going to be busy.
PCSO Wayne drops us off at the HQ of the Hinckley BID where we meet Steve, who is in charge. Steve explains about the ways in which the BID boosts local business by encouraging visitors. They also work with the police to try to drive down business crime, and retail crime in particular. He is most complimentary about the police effort.
One the way back to the car, Sophie and I drop in unannounced to a couple of pubs and several shops to talk to the managers about their experience with local crime and policing. One shopkeeper regales us with the tale of how he looked up through the skylight of his storeroom one day a few weeks ago to see a completely naked man being chased over rooftops by a police officer. A pub landlady says that a few days earlier she asked a man to leave when he appeared to be drunk. In response the man smashed a window. She called the police, who arrived promptly and arrested the man before he had gone a hundred yards. Everyone we spoke to was highly complimentary about Inspector Osborne and his team.
Friday 28 January
I start with some paperwork, then welcome Sarah Taylor, head of the Academy, to my office. She is very complimentary about a quote from the Duke of Wellington that I have framed and put up on the wall, then spends some time peering at the old postcards of Leicestershire and Rutland that are similarly on display. Then we get down to business. She talks me through what the Academy does and how it does it. Fascinating stuff.
The Deputy Chief Constable arrives next. He gives me an update on the rather disturbing incident from Melton Mowbray when a swastika was painted on a wall on Holocaust Remembrance Day. I give him the positive feedback from Hinckley, then discuss the job description for the Police Liaison Officer in the OPCC. Inspector Randall has left to gain a much-deserved promotion. Mr Nixon and the OPCC Chief Executive have been working on a job description for Inspector Randall’s replacement. After a chat, I sign it off.
Finally my PA Teresa comes in holding a Police Dog Calendar. Great Stuff!
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