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More must be done to make police accountable to local people, claims London Councils. The body representing the capital's boroughs called for more commitment to neighbourhood policing. London Council's executive member for crime and public protection, Cllr Ian Clement, said: ‘The Government now needs to make a public commitment to fund this type of neighbourhood policing in future.' The comments follow the interim report on policing in England and Wales, published by Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir Ronnie Flanagan. Sir Ronnie claimed closer working with councils would be the key to future policing. He claimed police forces had become ‘bogged-down in red tape', but admitted a strategy of neighbourhood policing was delivering results. He said: ‘We risk diverting officers' priorities to recording crimes rather than getting out on the streets solving them and preventing them.' Among his recommendations was volunteers being allowed to become unpaid police community support officers (PCSOs) to supplement neighbourhood teams. Neighbourhood policing is based on local priorities identified by the local community with each community assigned a neighbourhood team made up of police officers, community support officers, community wardens, special constables, volunteers and partner organisations. The Government has accepted the proposals from Sir Ronnie to cut red tape and said neighbourhood policing would be expanded to cover all areas of the country. Prime minister Gordon Brown said: ‘One of the issues that's really important is neighbourhood policing. ‘Everybody, rightly, says to us that if we don't have the police visible in our streets and neighbourhood, it's not a good deterrent and not going to have an effect.'

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ECONOMIC GROWTH

London police called to account

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