Local Survey responses ( a summary)

Thank you for those that completed the survey that was sent out last month. We have had some requests from interested residents, curious of what the local concerns are. We thought it would be a good opportunity to share this month’s survey responses with you all. 

The top concerns we have received are shoplifting, speeding and burglaries/ car thefts. 

We have been extremely busy over the last year or so, dealing with prolific shopliftings from Waitrose in Twyford. We have been working on identifying and prosecuting offenders. Most of these offenders have been travelling from London on the Elizabeth Line. We have been working with Waitrose throughout and we have seen a significant decrease the number of thefts. The shops around Twyford remain a hot spot for our local patrol plan, which gets reviewed on a monthly basis. 

Burglaries/ car thefts have a tendency to increase around the festive season and then in summer. Occasionally, we get opportunistic theft from vehicles in and around the Twyford area. Our main advice, is to ensure you do not leave valuables in your vehicle, always make sure you have locked your vehicle/ doors and don’t post on social media about going away on holiday. CCTV systems, faraday pouches and other security measures are also a great deterrent.

Speeding and parking/ pavement parking are always a hot topic in our neighbourhood area. When filling out our survey and referencing a pavement parking issue, please tell us the road this is happening on, so we can have a look and assess. Although double yellow line parking is for the local authority to deal with, parking on a pavement which obstructs to the point where a push chair/ wheel chair cannot fit is something police can deal with. 

In terms of speeding, our neighbourhood officers are not currently appropriately trained to use the speed enforcement devices. One of your local borough councillors as well as a local resident have been in contact with the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) regarding this gap in capability. I have also contacted the PCC myself, seeking some assistance, as the training is not currently supported by our Learning and Development team. We have previously asked our colleagues from our Roads Policing team, who are trained to use similar speed enforcement equipment. You may have seen them around the area, but this is usually in-between their attendance at road related emergencies. The Speedwatch initiative is managed by local parish councils, and run by volunteers. If you are interested in supporting their activity, many parishes are looking for assistance with this. 

We have also had reports of noisy vehicles travelling the A4. Unfortunately, our local neighbourhood policing team does not have any noise level monitoring equipment in order to help out with this. 

There has also been a report regarding the traffic build up during pick up outside the Piggott C of E School in Wargrave. This has been an ongoing issue and we have been working with the school to try and resolve this. Where we can, we have been enforcing the vehicles in the “no waiting” area outside the school. Unfortunately, during the last few months we have been overwhelmed by the volume of demand (most of which related to the aforementioned retail crime issues). Now that the shopliftings have significantly decreased, we have put this issue back on our local patrol plan.

Finally, we have had responses about a lack of local police stations and police visibility. Your local team is currently based out of Loddon Valley Police Station in Lower Earley. Although we would love to have a closer station to work out of, we have no control over where the local stations are. The local “Twyford” team covers an area much larger than just Twyford and the team consists of PC Young, PC Bogdanova and PCSO Maguire. The 3 of us cover anything from community engagement, anti-social behaviour reports, fraud reports, prolific shoplifting and many more. Dealing with an investigation can often be time consuming and involve quite a bit of paperwork and it is not unusual for us to be asked to help with other commitments such as Windsor Guard change and with assistance to other Police departments. As such, we have to be efficient with our resources and target our patrols based on where there are arising issues instead of patrolling areas that are otherwise peaceful. 

I am attaching another link to the local survey here: https://forms.office.com/e/UQvVrjFupV 

Please let us know what issues are affecting you or your community, to help inform our next patrol plan review. Specifics are very helpful to us, and your responses can be submitted anonymously. They are reviewed by the officers on our team directly, and discussed at a monthly meeting. 

Keep an eye out for our upcoming engagement events over the next few days.