As you may or may not know Cambridgeshire Constabulary has undergone a significant restructure and the changes are expected to contribute significantly towards the £4.7 million savings to be made in the coming financial year.The Constabulary and more importantly to you, Huntingdonshire has been restructured. I will attempt to explain the detail below and also who and how to contact the Police.
The new local policing structure means a number of functions that were previously delivered at a local level will now be delivered by a centrally based team. This means that local officers will be dedicated to dealing with local problems and specialist teams can focus all of their efforts on issues such as domestic violence, missing people and integrated offender management.
Management Team
Chief Inspector Chris Mead – Area Commander – The County has now been split into six districts in line with the council boundaries, with each area having an appointed commander who is responsible for delivering policing in that area. For Peterborough and Cambridge City this will be an officer of the rank of Superintendent and for the remaining four areas, a Chief Inspector.
Inspector Mark Greenhalgh – Safer Neighbourhood Manager – This post will focus on matters external, including partnership working, community engagement, crime reduction, and management of ASB, problem solving, reassurance, & media engagement.
Inspector Terri Griffin – Local Policing Team Manager – Day to day tactical management of the district, including resource management, ongoing management of critical incidents, policing events including Secret garden party. Management of internal processes including complaints & correspondence.
Detective Inspector Jon McAdam – Crime Manager – This post will focus on crime investigation and associated performance. It will ensure professional and victim focused investigations, maximizing positive disposal opportunities, including secondary disposals. It will manage intelligence and pro-active / covert policing operations and ensure robust management of offenders.
Local Policing Teams
These are five teams that cover 24 hours / 7 days a week and 365 days a year . Each team contains two sergeants and eleven constables, allocated geographically between all the towns in Huntingdonshire. Each Pc will be allocated an identified area for which they are responsible. This is their primary responsibility other than when they are allocated a response incident to deal with.
There are no change to the numbers of PCSO’s, and are still within the Towns and aligned to areas. In addition, the Special Constabulary are also active within Huntingdonshire.
Where there is an emergency call requiring an immediate response, this will be allocated on the “nearest and quickest” principle.
Crime Investigation Department
Comprising of three Detective Sergeants and 20 officers. The teams would be a mixture of Detective Constables and those aspiring towards a career in the Investigative field. These officers would investigate serious crime and other identified crime series.
Neighbourhood Long Term Problem Solving Team
This consists of three sergeants, one for each town. These will be the primary identified managers for local issues within their area, calling in resources from the wider policing team to effectively manage and resolve local issues. They will be responsible for local community engagement and the link into the front facing local policing team. Each sergeant would have two constables working with them to assist in resolving local policing issues, again calling on the wider policing team and partner agencies to assist in resolving and managing issues.
Huntingdon / Yaxley – Sgt Ed McNeill
St Neots & District – Sgt Garry Webb
St Ives / Ramsey – Sgt Dave Savill
Partnership Team
This team will work with Huntingdon District Council and will be co located with them. It consists of a Police Officer responsible for licensing / civil applications such as ASBO’s,etc and also within this team are two PCSO’s. One with the primary function of community cohesion and a second with responsibility for partnership working in relation to Children & Young Persons and tackling problem families for the area. This role will build up a bank of contacts, specialist knowledge and experience to support other PCSO’s but also to take on more complex cases.
Impact team
This team of a Sergeant and 7 Constables will be responsible for proactive operations, calling on the services of other teams for support where possible, offender enforcement activity and also to support local priorities. They focus will be to respond to intelligence, disrupt criminals and criminality thereby making the opportunities for criminals to offend very difficult and where they do, to secure evidence to convict them thereby driving crime reduction and detection performance.
As you can see, the structure is different, however Huntingdonshire has not lost out. There are no fewer officers on the ‘ front line’ as the majority of the savings have been made from senior officer rank. If anything, the new structure lends itself to more targeted partnership work at a local level and hopefully deal with the issues that matter / hurt the Community the most.
How to Contact the Police
If it is an Emergency incident such as a crime is happening ‘there and then’ and you require immediate Police assistance then dial ‘999.’
If it is a non emergency call – Dial ‘101’
In an effort to simplify the process, I have made one email route into Huntingdonshire Police. This will ensure that your message is not passed around from pillar to post and is routed to the correct people that can deal with it / provide advice.
If you wish to discuss an issue or pass on information by email with your local team the procedure is as follows:
Email :
This email will then be viewed and sent to the correct person to deal with the issue and they will also get back to you. The mailbox will be reviewed on a daily basis so expect a reply within 48 hrs.
If you need to discuss an issue with a senior rank, then the identified managers for the area should be your first point of contact as they are responsible for that area. They are :
Huntingdon / Yaxley – Sgt Ed McNeill
St Neots & District – Sgt Garry Webb
St Ives / Ramsey – Sgt Dave Savill
If you are expecting Police presence at an event, then I would urge you to give us as much notice and detail as possible in order that the Sgts can assess our attendance, as now more than ever we need notice to attend. In addition, Police attendance at meetings is being reviewed across the board as with the restructure, the primary focus and role of PCSO’s and officers is out and about dealing with the issues.
There are also several other plans in place that will develop over the next month or so to ensure we get communication right at different levels , as often in the past the Police often don’t tell of the work we have done or tell of the ‘good news’ stories. My aim is to share these with you a lot more in order that you can also share the messages within your organisations and Communities.
Many thanks
Mark Greenhalgh
Inspector Mark Greenhalgh
Safer Neighbourhood Manager
Huntingdonshire