UNDER the heading “A week of welcome news for local policing” Katy Bourne, the Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner, has announced in her latest weekly newsletter that from next month every community will have a named PCSO (police community support officer).

Every community, Mrs Bourne? I don’t think so, because there are getting on for 500 cities, towns and villages and named communities in Sussex and you are going to need an awful lot more support officers if every one of them is going to be allocated its very own.

Also, do you mean that every one of the county’s residents will always have a PCSO, whose name they know and to who they can turn to in their hour of need?

If you do then I am afraid that you are going to be as disappointed as the people that you serve.

The chances of this one person being available in “our hour of need” will be quite remote because each one of them will be working 37 hours a week for 47 weeks of a year.

That works out at 1,739 hours a year, and will be even less if they are either on sick leave or away on a course, but a year has 8,760 of them.

In other words, Mrs Bourne thinks that giving every community a named PCSO who won’t be around for more than 7,000 hours every year is “welcome news for local policing”.

It sounds to me like smoke and mirrors; something that is intended to make the public believe that action is being taken to address the lack of local policing but is anything but that.

It may have looked good to Mrs Bourne in her press release but it will make little, if any, difference to the antisocial behaviour that we see displayed on our streets on a daily basis.

Eric Waters, Lancing