Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper visits Padiham to outline Labour strategy against anti-social behaviour including 13,000 more neighbourhood police

The senior Labour MP was accompanied by her party’s Parliamentary candidate for Burnley, Oliver Ryan, and local councillors John Harbour and Sue Ritchie, when she visited Padiham ahead of the forthcoming May elections.

Chatting to the Burnley Express, Miss Cooper outlined her party’s bold claim that it would increase the number of neighbourhood police officers and PCSOs.

Ahead of the local elections, Labour is pushing for the government to adopt its fully funded plan for 13,000 more neighbourhood police and PCSOs on the street to reassure the public and tackle crime.

Ms Cooper said: “Our communities need local police officers, people who know what’s going on and are local eyes and ears on the ground. I don’t think the Tories get the importance of local community knowledge.

"We are bringing back community policing. People committing anti-social behaviour know there is a good chance they will get away with it at the moment.

In Lancashire there were 444 neighbourhood officers in 2015, down to 249 in 2022.

In the North West neighbourhood officers have fallen by 1,500 since 2015 from 3953 in 2015 to 2255 in 2022, a fall of 43% in 7 years. While PCSOs have fallen from 1800 to 1168 during the same time period.

Asked how Labour would pay for this increase, Miss Cooper said: “Labour has a fully-funded plan to invest over £360m. a year to restore neighbourhood policing by merging the procurement of IT systems and other services which are currently independently handled by all 43 forces at a huge cost.

“Everyone deserves to feel safe in their town centre. When shops are vandalised it hurts local businesses and the economy and it makes everyone feel less safe in town so people stay away. Crime and antisocial behaviour are really damaging for our communities and our local town economies. That’s why it’s so vital to get local police patrols restored.

“Neighbourhood police have been decimated under the Tories. In too many towns and neighbourhoods nothing is being done about nightmare antisocial behaviour and crime because there just aren’t any police.

"The next Labour government will put 13,000 police and PCSOs in neighbourhood roles because everyone deserves to feel safe.”

Mr Ryan added that a more holistic strategy would also stop people, particularly young people, from engaging in this kind of behaviour in the first place. This would include creating more youth mentors to work with young people and mental health professionals in schools.

Looking ahead to the next general election, Ms Cooper was asked whether Labour could retake its traditional stronghold of Burnley having lost to the Tories last time.

She replied: “Keir Starmer has taken our party forward. We have listened to people’s concerns over what went wrong last time and I am sure Oliver would make a great MP for Burnley. We have to earn back people’s trust through the hard work of our local councillors and candidates like Oliver, standing up for our NHS and police.

“The cost of living crisis is really hitting ordinary people hard at the moment and that is why we have announced a fereeze on council tax, which would be paid for by extending the windfall tax on energy companies who are making a huge profit at the moment.

“The country also badly needs more doctors and nurses and so we plan to end ‘non-dom’ tax breaks to help pay for their training and recruitment.”