As blue lamps are extinguished, doors padlocked and windows boarded up on rural police stations across England and Wales, and as the officers who worked within the local communities are posted to distant towns, the inevitable cracks are beginning to show.
Rural crime is rising and according to the latest data from the insurer NFU Mutual, the cost of crime to our rural economy reached over £44.5 million in 2013. This is an increase of 5.2 per cent from 2012.
Last year was also declared the worst year on record for the theft of livestock, with a rise in sheep and cattle rustling of 25 per cent. Expensive agricultural equipment such as machines and tractors are also being targeted, and according to the NFU “smuggled out of the country ending up in eastern Europe”.
Quite how anyone could conceal a combine harvester or a John Deere 9R (for the benefit of any urban-based readers that’s one hell of a big tractor) and take it abroad is baffling, but it is clear that organised gangs of criminals are succeeding.
Is it little wonder that they are, considering that there are now over 16,000 fewer police officers? Roads policing departments (traffic cops) have been decimated or are non-existent and police officers moved from country beats to bolster dwindling busy response teams, taking with them their local knowledge.
Rural communities are being short-changed in many ways; the Office of Fair Trading acknowledged that fuel and goods in local shops are generally more expensive, public transport is poor or non-existent and now, due to government cuts, the police presence is much thinner than ever before.
Fewer officers are travelling greater distances to attend incidents and on many occasions their attendance to deal with a crime means (to use a farming analogy) they are closing the gate after the horse has bolted.
To those marooned in Westminster or police command corridors who say that police numbers don’t matter, I suggest donning a pair of Wellies, green of course, and having a word with a farmer. I am sure that they will rather colourfully explain that ‘cuts do have consequences’!
Clive Chamberlain, former chair of Dorset Police Federation