THE police and crime commissioner has defended her position amid plans to scrap the role altogether.

Katy Bourne spoke out after the Labour Party announced it would abolish police and crime commissioners if the party was elected next May. The Conservative commissioner said any return to the police authorities that she replaced threatened a “backward step in accountability.”

Mrs Bourne, elected in 2012 on a turnout of 15.3%, said she “made sure local residents had a powerful voice in the policing of their communities.”

Plans to get rid of PCCs have been floated almost since the position was created by the Conservatives, but the Labour Party went a step further at its conference in committing to abolish them.

The party proposes a system in which policing would be overseen by independent inspectors, local government and local communities, but is working out the details.

In November the Independent Police Commission said PCCs were a “failed experiment” and recommended instead giving more powers to local government to oversee policing.

It also recommended the PCCs’ powers to hire and fire police chiefs and set their forces’ budget should be given to policing boards made up of the leaders of each local authority within the force’s area.

Mrs Bourne, who won 59 per cent of the vote, including second preferences, said policing boards could provide a place to “hide from public scrutiny.”

But she added she supported a “more robust” mechanism to get rid of failing PCCs, including the home secretary being able to recall a PCC in exceptional circumstances. She also said solved rates for burglary had increased by 61% in Brighton and Hove and 27% across Sussex over the past year as a result of her challenging the police to improve.

Godfrey Daniel, a Labour councillor in Hastings who came second against Mrs Bourne in the PCC election, said he supported the role being scrapped.

He said: “Whenever you put power in the hands of one person it is actually very difficult to know what is really going on.

“It is not the open accountability you get from a group of people with differing views expressing these arguments in public.”

Mrs Bourne, Sussex Police Chief Constable Giles York and Brighton and Hove divisional commander Nev Kemp will answer policing questions in a public meeting on October 6, at Hove Town Hall, organised by the PCC and chaired by The Argus editor Michael Beard. The panellists will take submitted questions and questions from the audience. To submit a question, email news@ theargus.co.uk or call 01273 544 520.

Registration is recommended, visit sussex-pcc.gov.uk.