More about this area

The force says...

West Mercia covers three unitary councils of Herefordshire, Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin and the two-tier county of Worcestershire. There are 1.2 million people living in West Mercia. Covering 7,428 square kilometres it is the fourth largest police area in England and Wales and has both densely populated urban conurbations and sparsely populated rural areas.

There are pockets of social deprivation in Redditch, Worcester, Wyre Forest, Telford and Wrekin that are among the 10 percent most deprived areas nationally.

In 2011 West Mercia Police entered into a strategic alliance with Warwickshire Police, which has enabled both organisations to achieve budget reductions by operating more efficiently.

Between 2011/12 and 2016/17 West Mercia delivered savings of £52.4m. During 2017/18  further savings totalling £15.0m were achieved. In 2018/19 further savings of £7.9m are needed to balance the budget and a further £16.4m by 2020/21 to bring expenditure into line with anticipated funding.  A total of £91.7m will have been delivered by the end of 2020/21.

In March 2017 West Mercia Police had 2,055 police officers, 239 police community support officers and 1,509 police staff. Recorded crime continued to rise in West Mercia in 2017. This links to increases in sexual and violent crime which reflect national trends.

The chief constable works closely with counterparts in Warwickshire Police, and the forces have developed a shared vision and set of values, to protect people from harm, especially the most vulnerable members of our communities.

During 2017 our ambitious and innovative joint transformational change programme, Vision 2020, saw significant progress.  Our new ICT platform was implemented and we built a new state of the art operations communications centre. Our policing model redesign is progressing well, while our mobile working project has seen smartphones and laptops being made personal issue. Body-worn video is now available to almost all frontline staff.

Disclaimer: the above statement has been prepared by West Mercia Police. The views and information in it are not necessarily those of HMICFRS.