1 April 2011

Please note: this news article is in our archive. Articles were correct at time of publication, but should not be relied on for accuracy after the passage of time.

SUSSEX Police has pledged to protect or improve its frontline services despite the financial challenges imposed by budget cuts.

In a report to East Grinstead Town Council Chief Inspector Edward De La Rue said this could not be achieved by working in the same way with less money and fewer people but would require the police to look at different ways to eliminate waste and reduce bureaucracy.

One way this is being done is by merging two police divisions (North Downs which covers Mid Sussex, Horsham and Crawley, and West Downs) to form one division covering the whole of West Sussex from April this year. This will save 800,000 in management costs and make it easier for the police to work more closely with its community partners.

It will also see the introduction of a new policing model.

Local Neighbourhood Policing Teams (NPT) will continue to provide community policing, but other officers will be divided into two teams.

Neighbourhood Response Team (NRT) officers will continue to patrol and attend emergency calls but will now hand over further investigations and prisoners to a new Response Investigation Team (RIT), freeing them up to get back out on the street.

This approach has already been tried successfully in Brighton and Hove, where it has been found that response officers have had much less paperwork to complete so they can get back onto the streets more quickly after answering a call.

Response times have fallen, and the average time it takes to investigate a crime has fallen from 44 days to 16.