Officers will be moved elsewhere

Anti-social behaviour officers will be redeployed as part of ongoing savings to the Lincolnshire Police staff, chiefs have confirmed.

Several posts are being removed, with the staff hopefully moved into other roles, writes Local Democracy Reporter Daniel Jaines.

Assistant chief constable Diane Coulson denied that the plans would make any officers redundant.

Community policing teams will take over work tackling anti-social behaviour.

“As part of our ongoing plans to make savings to bridge our funding gap and also investing resources into high risk areas of business we are having to make changes to our operating model,” she said. “No police officers are being made redundant but some will be deployed to other areas of policing.

“There are some police staff posts in the organisation which are being disestablished as part of this work, fortunately most of these are vacant.

“There are however a small number of police staff who are impacted, but we hope to be able to redeploy them into other roles within the organisation.

“Responsibilities around Anti Social Behaviour will be absorbed within our existing community policing teams.”

The move follows a slash in the number of Police Community Support Officers earlier this year.

At the end of January – just two weeks after celebrating 20 years of PCSOs in the county – Lincolnshire Police confirmed that they would cut the number from 91 to 50.

The move sparked concerns that people would see even fewer bobbies on the beat and that those that were patrolling would have less knowledge of their local area.

During budget discussions, a series of amendments were made to several councils calling for more support for police officers.

In most instances they failed as leaders refused to use council funding for police provision.