The proposals include:
- Replacing unelected police authorities with directly elected police commissioners.
- Scrapping unnecessary form filling and modernising computer systems.
- Creating new teams of part-time, paid police reservists.
- Hiring more civilian staff to take over office jobs from trained police officers.
- Replacing Whitehall direction and targets with locally accountable leadership and priority setting.
- Giving local communities a 'right to policing' - with access to their police through regular beat meetings, which local councillors will also attend.
- Providing residents with detailed information of crime levels in their area.
Philip Dunne, MP for Ludlow, welcomed the publication of this imaginative report and said:
"The police levy on council tax bills has soared by 209% in West Mercia since Labour came to power, but many local residents do not feel they have much to show for it. I have seen for myself over recent months how local police officers across West Mercia work really hard. But too often their time is taken up meeting Whitehall directives.
"More of our police should be out on the streets, doing what they joined the police force to do - preventing crime and catching criminals - not behind desks filling out forms.
"Turning this around won't be easy or quick. But by replacing Labour's top-down centralisation with bottom-up local accountability; by replacing Labour's superficial gimmicks to appear tough on crime with serious and substantive change; and by replacing state control with social responsibility, we can make the Ludlow constituency a safer and better place to live for everyone."
