Can't do the simple common sense thing can they, and give us policing like it used to be, when we had beat officers, policing was done proactively, and every offence was properly investigated? That's all we want. But no. It has to be Nu Labourised and made a sop to joe public, who just want our elected representatives to get their fingers out and do what they are paid for!!!

there are a few points in this story that concern me;
The first being that it opens up the possibility of election races popularity contests and smearing by those "police chiefs" that are trying to be elected.
It will never be a good thing when chief officers are playing a direct game of "one up manship" against each other in order to gain votes instead of focusing on what is best for the force and officers that they command. Also the article doesnt seem to suggest what rank these officers will hold.

secondly the statement about having a timed response to calls.

This is not only dangerous but wholey impractical.
the impact of this will be police drivers potentially taking more risks in order to get the call faster in order to respond within the alloted time limits. It also means that if you have a police officer speaking to you for a non emergancy matter then there is more chance that they will be pulled away from you in order to get to the Emergancy call within that time limit. Within towns like Brighton 15 minutes is not an unreasonable space of time to respond to a call (staffing/level of calls/and major incidents permitting) however in the rural areas such as east sussex an emergancy call in peacehaven may have an officer responding from seaford, clearly in this case the 15 min rule would put increased pressure on the driving of that officer, when you take into account the time in which the call is made. the time it is passed from call taker to radio room, radio room alloted to a unit to respond and then traffic conditions, level of driving permit and the distance the officer is away from the call.

I can also see that this is open to abuse from some areas of the public, It is no secret that SOME people who call the police know that to ensure a faster response you have to "big up" the call. If you now know that an emergancy call garuntees a police officer in 15 mins then i fear that we will see an increase in emergancy calls that arnt what they say on the tin when officers have broken their necks to get there within the time limit.

to me the suggestion that a time limit needs to be imposed suggest that the response to calls is not quick enough, the answer to this is not putting the existing officers undder more pressure to be faster the simple answer is more police officers. one police officer can only deal with one call at a time, no matter how fast they get there. The more there are esp in areas like brighton where teams are already stretched passed breaking point the easier these targets will be matched. Unfortunatly more police costs people more money.

Another great idea from the stables of Zanuliebour.

So there will be targets to respond within 15 minutes - well we've seen how the doctors dealt with that one - you can't get through to the surgery to book an appointment - the same thing will happen to the police. You just won't get through - there - target met!

As for the BNP hijacking the election!!! Didn't a judge describe our postal vote system as worthy of a banana republic. No hope there then of the BNP vote getting out of control and actually winning - the votes will be too easily manipulated to overturn what the people want!!