More about this area
The force says...
Surrey Police serves a population of 1.19 million covering an area of 642 square miles. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire, and Berkshire and is divided into 11 boroughs and districts. The county’s residents are 49% male, 51% female, 19% are aged over 65 with 61% aged 16-64 and 20% aged under 16.
90.4% of residents identify as white/white other and 9.6% identify as BAME Black, Asian, Minority ethnicity.
Surrey’s roads carry almost double the national average amount of traffic and its 62 motorway miles includes the busiest stretch of the M25 with both Gatwick and Heathrow Airports bordering the force.
Surrey hosts two annual major events, the Epsom Derby attracting over 100,000 racegoers and the Ride London cycle race.
Demand continues to increase all areas of policing within the county, in 2018 Surrey Police received a total of 635,824 calls for service an increase of 7.4%.
The force received 135,917 Emergency 999 calls and 312,930 Non-Emergency 101 calls recording 212,564 incidents of which 74,745 were crimes.
Public safety and welfare issues currently make up 46% of all incidents.
The total number of crimes reported was 74,745 an increase of 2.5% compare to 2017. The largest proportion (40%) of crimes relate to violence and volumes in this category continue to increase. Theft makes up a further 20% of all crime but volumes in this category remain stable. The force has also seen increases in sexual offences, theft of motor vehicles, robbery and cyber related offences, over the last year.
The complexity of these investigations, especially those involving digital media or communications data or safeguarding issues, continues to increase. The use of technology in offending is an ever increasing issue often directed at those most vulnerable in our county.
Mental health issues continue to impact with an anticipated 12% rise in incidents by 2020. A number of partnership initiatives have been put in place to assist in reducing this demand, including the introduction of a joint police and mental health trust team, to provide a consistent response to high risk and high demand patients to ensure that the response provided by officers is appropriate to the individual’s needs.
The force is focusing on those issues that impact most, safeguarding those who call on our service, cyber enabled crime, sexual assaults and the serious threats of insurgent crime ‘County lines’ criminality and continues to enhance its partnership problem solving capability in support of neighbourhood policing.
In order to manage these issues for the financial years 2019/20, through the precept increase of £3.8m, the force will be investing heavily in our preventative policing approach and recruiting an additional 104 police officers and staff to support neighbourhood prevention and intervention, safeguarding, cyber- crime and serious organised crime.
To continue in delivering savings, the force is collaborating both bilaterally and regionally. One such programme is the current tri force collaboration programme working to deliver a single technology platform to manage many of the supporting internal functions and automate record keeping.
Disclaimer: the above statement has been prepared by Surrey Police. The views and information in it are not necessarily those of HMICFRS.