Labour launches plan to tackle rural crime wave

Paul Richards

Ask any of the Labour candidates for Police and Crime Commissioner in next week’s election about the top issues in rural areas, and they will tell you the same thing. Rural crime is out of control.

The rural crime rate has surged by a third since 2011, compared to a quarter in urban areas. It’s worse in areas covered by a Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner. For example, in Tory-led North Yorkshire there has been a 20 per cent rise in possession of weapons offences, 18 per cent rise in vehicle offences, and 15 per cent rise in theft offences.

You don’t need a degree in criminology to work out why. The Coalition Government’s decision to cut 20,000 police from England and Wales must stand as one of the greatest public policy errors since the Poll Tax. It left huge swathes of rural areas undefended against crime and antisocial behaviour.

The absence of police patrols in our countryside and villages has created a boom-time for organised crime gangs. Organised crime will always follow the money. For example, gangs target farmers’ GPS systems because they are valuable, portable, and eminently stealable. Farming bodies have reported significant rises in theft linked to organised crime groups.

The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) says that international trends have accelerated demand for stolen machinery. The total cost of claims linked to agricultural machinery has risen by 29 per cent, while the cost of claims linked to GPS theft has risen by 15 per cent. According to NFU Mutual, 80 per cent of members are reporting disruption to their activities from rural crime, and the total cost of rural crime has risen by 22.1 per cent over the last year to £49.5 million.

Across rural areas, confidence in the police has dropped by 10 percentage points over the last five years – mirroring a similar fall in victim satisfaction, with the proportion of victims happy with the service they received dropping from 67 per cent to 56 per cent. Confidence in the police is now lower in rural areas than in major urban centres.

Rural crimes are also increasingly going unpunished. Analysis from the BBC has found that suspects are almost 25 per cent more likely to be charged for crimes in urban areas than in the countryside.

As the Labour & Co-operative candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner in Sussex, I welcome the Labour Rural Crime Strategy launched today. The key thing is cross-government working, with co-ordination between the Home Office, DEFRA, and the National Crime Agency as well as local constabularies to tackle organised crime gangs. The nature of organised crime in the countryside is that it is international and crosses the borders of police constabularies.

Our plan will increase police patrols in rural areas, as part of Labour’s plans for 13,000 more neighbourhood police and PCSOs which will cover all communities and help free up response times in rural areas.

We need tougher laws on GPS theft, new powers to protect animals, and a crackdown in flytipping, trespass, vandalism, and other forms of antisocial behaviour. I want to see new Fixed Penalty Cleaning Notices to ensure fly-tipping offenders have to clean up their own mess, court-issued Respect Orders for persistent adult offenders, with bans on individuals from target areas. As PCC I will introduce local drug enforcement teams to patrol local areas to gather intelligence and shut down known drug dealing sites.

Trust in the police is hanging by a thread. People don’t bother reporting crime because they know little will happen. Nine out of ten crimes go unpunished. Yet the whole system rests on consent. In our rural areas, this trust is being stretched to breaking point. Farming communities are at the end of their tether. The frustration is palpable, with the constant refrain that you never see the police in rural areas, and they seldom show up, even if you call 999.

The strategy unveiled by Yvette Cooper and Keir Starmer this week is an important step forward. It represents a workable and affordable plan, and it shows that Labour gets the rural economy and understands rural communities.