Police leaders have warned that heavy cuts to their budgets risk cutting the supply line of information from the neighbourhoods that are home to would be terrorists and we have already been told that Sussex is to lose more policemen and PCSOs as a result of further budget cuts.
This is a nonsensical policy in the present climate and particularly after the outrages in Paris. I understand security services were given an increase of funding from between £1.9 billion to £2.0 billion in 2015-16 following George Osbourne’s 2013 Spending Review – just a month after Lee Rigby’s murder in Woolwich.
The golden thread that runs through police into local communities to links abroad risks being broken by this crass decision. We know how close we are in this part of the world to the influx of refugees coming into this corner of the country, with some fearing terrorists arriving under the cloak of refugee status.
Border controls too require beefing up and presumably this will require funding. It is a case of looking at our priorities and to my mind if we spent less on overseas aid and reducing the untold waste in other government departments we might just be able to have more policemen doing what they are employed to do and secure our safety!
Perhaps we might even have greater law enforcement on our streets in Rye?