The South West is certainly unique, and with that comes unique challenges – particularly because it stretches across one of the largest geographical areas in England.
Many of our towns, villages and hamlets are rural and remote, and we are surrounded by sea on three sides.
That, Alison Hernandez says, presents some demanding needs which have to be addressed.
The Devon and Cornwall Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), who is from Torquay, understands the struggle of the South West in its fight for Government recognition very well.
“I got into politics as I was frustrated; in my home town, I thought our MP wasn’t doing enough for our area,” she said.
“We’ve had so little investment from the Government, which has partly been because our politics have not always been the same colour as the Government in the South West, so often we’ve been yellow when the Government has been red or blue and that has not helped us one bit.
“For decades we have had a lack of attention and investment in the South West. The coalition tied our hands. Now we are not in a coalition, now is the time.
“We have got to ensure our MPs are working really hard for us in Westminster and I would say they can be negotiating support for things around the country as long as we are getting something for the Westcountry.
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“Now is the time to really push, and there may be an opportunity to get something out of it.”
The PCC has partnered with the Western Morning News’ Back the Great South West campaign to push for much needed investment in our area.
The paper reignited its long-running campaign at the beginning of this year with Great South West partners, Pennon, LiveWest and the PCC to secure Government funding.
At the end of 2019, with the campaign having culminated in recognition from the Prime Minister and his business advisers who invited a delegation to Downing Street, the campaign moved forward with one clear voice to garner investment and recognition.
As a result, Back the South West underwent a rebrand to unite with key leaders in the region and step up the fight to get what the area needs.
There are a number of key areas the PCC would like to see addressed with Government spending, including cash to help prevent road deaths, recognising the policing challenges the summer brings and money spent on our rural road network.
“We are sitting in a city right now and still people are isolated and lonely, but we also have real geographical challenges,” Alison said.
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“We are the largest force area in England and I think those challenges often mean we lack general services in those rural areas.
“If someone does not have the ability to easily go to the doctor or a domestic abuse charity they are not going to go to the police either as they are used to not asking for help.”
The PCC also touched on our roads and why more needs to be done to ensure funding is funneled through to the South West for them. She added how a recent study conducted with partners showed that 61% of road deaths are on rural roads in our area, and that the first response is key.
“[The Government] doesn’t recognise the amount of rural road we have,” she said. There is a lot of talk about the strategic road network but most of ours out of 13,500 miles of road is rural. So we’ve got challenges that we’re just not funded for trying to police rural roads.
“We are surrounded by sea on three sides as well which means we’ve only got ourselves to help ourselves.
“Wee have only got one way to go for help. In other areas, they are surrounded by other players who can help them in a crisis whereas we haven’t.”
“We put in a bid for a special grant with the Home Office to get recognition for our special issues but it didn’t quite fit the criteria – they did encourage us to put it in to highlight challenges.
She added: “The amount of deaths on our roads is appalling. We need Government money to help try and to get to zero road deaths – I’m determined to do something different.
“We could do with funding to improve the engineering of our roads as well as funding for ambulances, particularly in Cornwall and remote areas.
“Really it needs to stretch to all public transport. Our rail links – are we getting a secondary line in Dawlish, will it be resilient enough, and how do we let people who live in remote areas get access to rail? Opening up some of those lines will be so exciting for us if we can do that.
“Bus journeys are important, as is cycling on roads without cycle lanes – we have a lot to invest in on just getting us out and about.
“If we can have a good road network it helps policing to get out and around. Road and infrastructure is one of the key safety aspects that needs dealing with I think.”
Summer stretches the Devon and Cornwall police force, too.
“For us, we think our local people get a real disservice in the summer. Their investigation is likely to be slower as we are now dealing with immediacies coming in,” she said.
“We have caravan parks with 10,000 people in them – these are huge communities which do have incidents. We would like more funding to have that recognition, but the reality is what we've had to do is innovate, and we will keep innovating as there is only ever so much money.”
Through the Blue Light Fund, which is a collaboration between the PCC, fire services and councils and is funded through council tax, more trained officers are being rolled out across the region.
Cornwall now has 10 Tri-Service-Safety Officers who act as responder paramedics, are trained firefighters and have powers slightly lesser than those of a PCSO.
Devon has seven community responders who are trained firefighters for 21 hours per week – but they are also trained as police specials who can use any unallocated time volunteering in their communities.
As the budget approaches, the PCC has tried to evidence the investment made in dealing with the summer challenge.
Over a three year period, £17.9 million has been spent to deal with the pressure that the influx of visitors brings.
“We have invested in incident resolution centres to help prioritise cases and ensure the best possible outcome for victims. They are dealing with and advising the public on how to deal with that situation so they can relieve the frontline.
“We have created different channels of communication such as web chat and a police email – that didn’t exist even four years ago.
“Lots of costs have been built into the system to deal with that peak summer challenge.
“We want recognition that we have got this challenge and we want the Government to say ‘we see that you’re unique’.”