This month, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services published quite a damning report into Surrey Police.

The inspector said: “I have concerns about the performance of Surrey Police in keeping people safe, reducing crime and providing victims with an effective service. In particular, I have serious concerns about how the force is responding to the public.

“Surrey has a lower-than-average number of 999 calls and a comparatively low number of 101 calls. 

“But despite this, the force doesn’t always answer emergency and non-emergency calls in a timely way. A high number of callers to its non-emergency 101 facility abandon their call. Some of these callers will contact the force by another means, such as through its online platform. Other callers will simply give up. So, crime will go unreported and vulnerable people will not be safeguarded. This was highlighted as an area for improvement during our last PEEL inspection in 2021-22, but performance has deteriorated.”

Those words from the independent expert that reviewed our local police shows Surrey’s Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner, Lisa Townsend, is failing on the basics of keeping Surrey safe.

There is no amount of spin from the Commissioner’s team can disguise this dreadful inspection report. 

The Commissioner has had nearly three years to sort out the staff shortages at Surrey Police’s contact centre, but has ignored public concerns and as a result performance has deteriorated further.

As recently as April this year, the Commissioner’s proposed solution for the 101 service was to increase the target response time from three minutes to five minutes, and to tell the public to report crimes online instead. It should not take a damning inspection report to force the Commissioner into action.

But the problems with the Conservative Commissioner’s oversight of Surrey Police go much deeper. The report found that our police “requires improvement” in two further areas: recording data about crime and developing a positive workplace, which is an area that has been completely ignored in Surrey’s Police and Crime Plan, and three further areas were only adequate.

In particular, the report found that reported crimes, including rape, were not being properly recorded, that Surrey had a low rate of solving crime, and that 11.3 per cent of Surrey Police employees had been bullied or harassed by colleagues in the past year. Only two out of nine categories were rated good.

Residents in Surrey and Woking pay the highest council tax in the country for our police, and we deserve better. While the new Chief Constable has made a promising start in tackling these issues, the Commissioner has been failing on the basics. 

The Commissioner’s existing oversight of Surrey Police is not fit for purpose, and urgently needs to be improved – if local people do not see a notable improvement, they can and should remove the Commissioner from office at the elections in May 2024.