‘Failure in policing’ means Bedfordshire farmers are turning to private security
Date of alert:
Thursday, 7 April 2022
Crime Ref:
Force:
Bedfordshire Constabulary
Freya Morgan, vice-chair NFU Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire, told the Bedfordshire Police and Crime Panel held last night (Tuesday, April 5) that some rural communities are using private security patrols.
She said: "In Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire there is a private group, who a lot of us subscribe to, who cover our rural areas at night because we’re not getting that coverage from the police.
"And it’s not just farmers, it’s people in small villages; households and businesses.
"At the moment our crime rates seem to have gone down, and this is purely because we’ve had somebody else helping to do that, and to help the police," she said.
Councillor Gareth Mackey (Central Bedfordshire) said: "My heart fell to the pit of my stomach when I heard that farmers have got to have third-party security firms effectively patrolling their land because of the failure in the policing.
"This is so disheartening to anyone, and what makes me sort of more [concerned] about it is that it is one step away from vigilantism."
Bedfordshire's police and crime commissioner, Festus Akinbusoye, replied: "I would not want to be saying that we have seen a failure of policing here, without an appreciation of the wider picture of our funding situation."
