Hampshire and Isle of Wight’s chief constable Scott Chilton, pictured, stressed police have to work in a fair and appropriate way when dealing with unauthorised encampments, during a livestreamed Q&A event.
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Commissioner’s Oversight of Policing Service (COPS) sessions allow the public to ask the police and crime commissioner Donna Jones (Con) to raise issues and ask questions.
She said 217 questions had been submitted ahead of the session, which was a record. It was streamed across three Facebook pages on August 14.
Questions were largely around road safety, anti-social behaviour, drug related issues, issues around theft, and around burglary.
Scott Chilton started as chief in February and it was his second COPS session facing questions from the public.
On unauthorised encampments, which have been a hot topic in Bitterne Park as well as in many other places over the summer, Brian from the PO13 area asked the question: “Why do the police not use their new powers in the immediate removal of travellers setting up camps in residential areas … until after they’ve caused considerable mess and trouble to the local community?”
Chilton responded: “Police have always had powers. They were reviewed and … there were some amendments made to it fairly recently. They’re not material in terms of what our response should be. If an unlawful encampment takes place, I know the impact on the community and the concerns it means for residents.
“It’s the responsibility of the landowner to actually sort of serve notice on them and the police to then use their powers when there’s significant disruption has taken place. And there are all sorts of variables in that.
“The approach I take, and I always have taken, is I want those notifications to take place by the landowner as early as possible, and they are often councils, but not exclusively. The police will then do an assessment straight away, and then we will put in action places to be able to remove those people.”
He stressed that the police has to work in partnership in this area, and has to work in a “fair and appropriate way”.
“But that does not mean, at all, whatsoever, that people should tolerate anti-social behaviour of people leaving a mess, people committing crime: police will take action and they’ll do it. I expect our enforcement on this to increase …. but I do understand that we have to follow the law, we have to follow the legislation, and we have to make sure we do it in a quick and efficient fast way, but it is important to communities, and it’s important that they see the police taking action.
“And there are examples of where it’s been done really well but I think we should toughen up a little bit more.”
Crime commissioner Donna Jones stressed that legislation had been tightened, for example reducing the number of vehicles to be able to ban people from returning to a site, and increasing the ban period.
“So there have been some small tweaks but the reason the police are not able to automatically move people on if they don’t have a lawful reason to be on a piece of land is because in the legislation the word ‘significant harm’ in the assessment is still there … they still have to justify significant impact which is exactly the same as the old legislation.”
She added that “No 10 are looking at it”.
You can watch a recording of the whole stream here