We made ten pledges for the four years of this Council. We have delivered them all.
Kingston is the safest Borough in London. We have paid for 12 extra Police officers and that has helped Kingston maintain low crime levels.
In four years Kingston has moved from being 4th safest Borough in London to being the safest Borough in London through close working with the Police and supporting their initiatives with real money. The Mayor has a new plan to merge Borough Policing into larger Borough Command Units. This means that less resources look likely to be spread across a bigger area that includes Wandsworth, Merton, Richmond and Kingston. We will fight to keep policing in Kingston and whilst numbers are undoubtedly going down the Conservative Council believes it is right that we paid for more Police to keep down anti-social behaviour and burglary. This is why the Council has also invested in Automatic Number Plate recognition (ANPR) that will identify known felons as they enter and leave the Borough. We are all worried about rising burglaries but the good news is that despite our concerns, year on year the figures are not rising hugely as there were 64 Kingston burglaries in December 2014 compared with 68 burglaries in December 2017. Never complacent, ever watchful.
50 year old Max said: “You always worry about crime but it’s marvellous that the Council gets that and is spending money paying for more Police, making us the safest Borough in London. Let’s hope they can continue to keep crime down as the Mayor seems to be spending his money on things that won’t help us.”
Despite crime rising across London we have seen a flatlining in crime in Kingston Town centre where there were 314 crimes in December 2017 against 306 crimes in December 2014. To understand those figures better, across the whole Borough there was a decline in crime with 931 crimes in December 2015 and 911 in December 2017, after the new Police were introduced. In Richmond, there were 973 crimes and in Wandsworth 2,183 crimes. You can see crime stats at the new Met Police site here.
