PROTESTS by residents that the police presence will still be “invisible” despite a ten per cent increase in this year’s council tax put further pressure on Surrey Police and Crime Commissioner David Munro to defend his actions.

The money raised from the 2019/20 increase will generate an extra £12.8m for the force .

Mr Munro said if he had not increased the policing element of council tax by an extra £24 a year for a Band D household, residents would have seen a reduction in officer numbers.

“Generally, Waverley Borough has a low level of crime,” he said. “Surrey overall has one of the lowest crime rates in the country and Waverley has the lowest crime rate within Surrey per 1000 population.

“Looking at Haslemere itself, I can see a small increase of 20 crimes – from 540 to 560 – over the past year.

“But of course, we would like to see all crime reduced and Surrey Police have been carrying out operations across the county to reduce burglary offences. The increase in council tax will fund around 100 front-line staff to tackle priority issues in Surrey.

“In terms of police stations, we have had to accept these are no longer the way people wish to contact officers. Footfall where there were stations with front counters had reduced to very small numbers, while calls to the 101 number remained stable and online reports have been increasing greatly.

“It was not providing public value for money to keep stations open for the public.

“The reasons for visiting now tend to be to attend custody or a voluntary interview, or produce documents, hence our reduction to one per Surrey division. However, this has been a decision around public contact with police.

“Police presence in Surrey has changed to meet new demands and new ways of working . Mobile technology means officers no longer have to ‘book-in’ or work out of a police station. They are out and about in Surrey and ready to attend calls.

“A call made from Haslemere will not be responded to from Guildford but will be assigned to the nearest available Area Policing Team. There are also Safer Neighbourhood Teams dedicated to each borough in Surrey who will work with communities to solve any ongoing problems.”

One resident objecting to this year’s tax hike has urged the role of PCC should be abolished (see this week’s letters on Page 17) “freeing up at least £2m and recruiting another 20 police offers in addition to the 100 proposed”.

This week, Mr Munro hit out at the amount of money used from the council tax precept to pay for the pensions of retired police officers.

He said the extra £4.3 million in employers’ pension contributions was “out of the blue” and although he did not “begrudge” paying it, felt it should not come from precept money.

Mr Munro said the force had been hit a couple of months ago with a re-evaluation of police officer pension.

The majority of the £4.3m has been accounted for this year, except for about £400,000 which will be paid for out of the precept.

He said it has been sorted for next year’s budget, but that it was an issue his office would need to return to in the future as the increasing rate of employers’ pension contributions for police officers would take effect from April 2020.

Mr Munro said: “We did lobby nationally and individually that this was not a fair charge on police officer budget and if there was more money to be spent on police officer pensions then it should be paid for out of central taxation. We didn’t win that argument, but we will return to it.

“I believe it’s fundamentally wrong precept payers should pay for pensions of retired officers. There are more retired officers on the payroll than there are serving police officers in Surrey.”

* The extra £12.8m will fund 75 officers and 25 community support officers.