Home Office launches ad campaign as part of national policing pledge

24 Nov 09

The Home Office has devised an advertising campaign to let all citizens know exactly what rights they have under the national policing pledge.

By Brian Sims

An official statement suggests that the Government is to run television, radio, press and online adverts as part of the next phase of its policing pledge campaign, which lets us all know what we can expect from our local police service.

The campaign will be focusing on two particular aspects of the pledge which, according to research, are shown to have generated the least amount of awareness among the public at large. They aspects are:

• that neighbourhood policing teams spend 80% of their time on the beat in the local area

• that individuals can make an appointment to see their local police about non-emergency problems at a time to suit them, and within 48 hours of any request being made

Results of Government research

Research has found that over half of the public think they would have to wait more than 48 hours for an appointment with a police officer to discuss a non-emergency matter, while only 3% of people believe that their local police spend more than 75% of their time on the beat in their area.

The research also found that people would like more information on how to contact their local police service, not to mention other crime and anti-social behaviour services in their area.

To provide this information, the Home Office will be delivering leaflets to just over six million households in 60 areas across the country.

The necessary information is also being added to a new Crime and Justice Section on the Directgov website (see dedicated link for details). The new section will include a facility to look up local neighbourhood policing teams, victim support services and the nearest Court(s), find crime statistics for a particular area and nominate projects which might be worked on by offenders completing community payback.

More confidence to ‘come forward and report crime’

Home Secretary Alan Johnson has stated that the campaign will make it easier for people to “know what their rights are if they are suffering from anti-social behaviour”.

Johnson added: “By letting people know about these standards of service that all police forces have signed up to, we hope that people will have greater confidence to come forward, report crime and give evidence against criminals in Court. They’ll do so because they’ll know that the police are a visible presence locally, available to be on their side.”

The policing pledge is a set of promises from the police to citizens concerning the services they will provide. All 43 police forces in England and Wales have signed up to keep these promises. More information can be found on the Directgov website.