Chief Constable fortnightly update to the Police and Crime Commissioner - 1 August 2025

Dear Police and Crime Commissioner, Philip Wilkinson,

As we enter the summer holiday period, I wanted to outline our response to the likely increase in the demands we face to ensure we are supporting our communities. 

Across the summer months, we see increases in both the calls for our services and reports of certain crime types. Traditionally, this normally includes spikes in shoplifting, Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) and public order offences.

Recently, we've seen the highest number of crimes recorded in the last three months (May, June and July) than any other period in the last three years. On average, we have recorded 3,800 crimes a month since May.

On average, across June, July and August, we take more than 700 calls (both 999 and 101) a day - in that period last year, we took a total of 68,201 calls.

Understanding this demand has informed the design and delivery of our policing response, focussing on enhancing safety and reducing crime in town centres across the county.

The national Safer Streets Summer campaign, which runs until the end of September, focuses on reducing crime - especially knife crime, tackling ASB, and serious violence with the aim of ensuring that town centres are welcoming and safe for all residents and visitors. 

The campaign will target key locations in Wiltshire that experience higher levels of anti-social behaviour, retail crime and potential public disorder during the summer months. 

There will be an additional focus on education and enforcement action on illegal e-scooter and e-bike use, having recently launched a dedicated operation targeting these illegal vehicles. From today (August 1), anyone who is stopped riding an illegal e-scooter or modified, high-powered e-bikes can expect to have it seized and destroyed.

The operation is a response to numerous complaints that we receive around these vehicles being ridden dangerously and used as a means for associated criminality and antisocial behaviour.

Our communities can find out more about this operation here. 

The public will also see extra patrols at transport hubs, an increased use of our mobile police stations to improve our accessibility, enhanced support for youth engagement projects and additional strides being taken to share more information directly from our Neighbourhood Policing Teams - with regular updates on patrol data, arrests, and outcomes. 

The key locations where this activity will be concentrated will be Swindon, Salisbury, Chippenham, Trowbridge and Marlborough. 

This enhanced focus is supported by £1m from the Home Office’s Hotspot Response Fund – delivered via your office. Our actions have been informed by real-time crime data and community feedback.

Across the summer, residents can expect to see an increase in Police Officers and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) in town centres and high-visibility patrols in 34 crime hotspots identified by recorded data. 

A key part of Safer Streets Summer will be ensuring we are regularly providing updates on our activity to our communities and partners. 

A great illustration of keeping our stakeholders appraised of the improvements we are making to our service was an open session with all Wiltshire Council councillors jointly hosted by us last week. This provided an opportunity for us to update them on our Force performance in addition to answering questions from elected officials across the county.

The session, which will be replicated with all Swindon Borough Councillors later in the year, enabled us to provide councillors with information and data to help address questions or concerns their constituents have.

We discussed the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee (the subject of this previous letter to you), our recent successes with dismantling drug supply networks (full update can be found here) and some of the recent misconduct cases we’ve seen.

I truly welcome any opportunity to appraise our communities on our performance and our continued improvement journey.

Our performance was also outlined this week by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) who published the latest set of full year crime statistics for Wiltshire Police.

The data, which covers March 2024-March 2025, shows:

~ We still have the lowest total recorded crime rate in England and Wales – 53.3 crimes per 1,000 population compared to the national average of 87.2 crimes per 1,000 population

~ A 14% increase in the reporting of drugs offences – up to 1,194 recorded this year. We believe this shows our communities are feeling more confident in passing intelligence to us, and a greater reflection of the proactivity of Wiltshire Police teams in identifying perpetrators and bringing them to justice

~ A 23% fall in recorded robbery – down by 63 recorded cases compared last year

~ An increase in the reporting of sexual offences – up by 190 reports from last year to 2,116 which we believe indicates increased public confidence in reporting.

Our communities can read the full ONS report here.

Finally, I wanted to share the incredible achievement of Ken Bridgeman who has just celebrated his 46th year as a Special Constable with Wiltshire Police.

SPC Bridgeman joined the organisation as a detention officer in 1975 before becoming a Special Constable on April 1, 1980.

I would like to publicly thank SPC Bridgeman, who was a receipt of this year’s High Sheriff Awards, for his unwavering dedication to our organisation and the communities we serve. You can read his extraordinary story here.

I frequently highlight the contribution of our incredible volunteers. If anyone would like to be part of the Wiltshire Police Special Constabulary, there is more information available here.

Kindest regards to you,

Catherine Roper

Chief Constable, Wiltshire Police