Holiday park owners from Burnham-On-Sea, Berrow and Brean have met Police and local MP James Heappey to discuss concerns about crime.
The meeting, at Home Farm in Edithmead, was attended by over 20 park owners, security managers and staff along with Chief Inspector Lisa Simpson who commands the police force in Somerset and Sergeant Ryan Edwards from the local beat team.
A number of issues were discussed, from caravan thefts to tackling drunk and disorderly behaviour.
Chief Inspector Simpson agreed to look at some of the specific complaints made by those present, whilst also saying that more could be done to work with holiday park owners and security staff to tackle some of the more general issues raised.
Avon & Somerset Police said they will be upgrading their highly successful Pubwatch scheme, meaning new radio systems will work better in Brean than the previous system.
All agreed that having security and door staff in Burnham-On-Sea, Berrow and Brean connected directly to the local police would make police more aware of possible trouble before it happened, and also mean that holiday park and pub staff would not need to contact the police through the main switchboards.
Re-deployment of CCTV and securing additional police resource for anticipated peak periods was also discussed.
Mr Heappey said afterwards: “I’m really grateful to Avon & Somerset Police and the park owners and security teams for engaging so positively at our meeting.”
“There have been some really unfortunate incidents this summer and I’m grateful to Chief Inspector Simpson for agreeing to look at those.”
“Going forward, it is clear that by connecting security teams and door staff across the area directly to the police, we’ll be providing reassurance to those working in the holiday parks whilst giving the police a much better feel for what’s going on before emergency calls are needed. I expect that to make a big difference locally.”
“More generally, whilst I’d like to see the Police & Crime Commissioner make more savings in the back office to fund more police on the streets, I also recognise that we need to call on Government to tackle the ‘damping’ formula which is reducing funding for forces like Avon & Somerset more quickly than for its more metropolitan counterparts.”
“Our police are doing a great job with limited resources but whilst crime numbers are falling, there is no escaping that we cannot continue to expect the level of service we want if budgets continue to be cut.”
