Numbers of Police in Burnham-On-Sea and Highbridge have been boosted “to full strength,” resulting in a “massive decrease” in drug dealing and related offences, a top local police officer told councillors last night.
In an update to town councillors at their latest virtual meeting on Monday evening (December 7th), Neighbourhood Sergeant Joe Piscina of Avon and Somerset Police gave a positive update on progress.
He said: “We’ve got the local teams for Burnham and Highbridge now up to full strength which is fantastic because we’ve struggled for a number of years.”
“What that’s allowed us to do is carry out more pro-active patrols in the area. We’ve had some really good results over the last six months with ‘County Lines’ drug dealing coming into the area and we’ve worked really closely with local housing providers.”
“We’ve got it pretty nailed in terms of how we address anywhere that is a vulnerable location, plus how we close those addresses down, and move people on.”
“There was an address that we closed down in the summer which took much longer than we would have liked. We’ve taken the learning out of that and subsequently been able to close addresses problem areas down a lot quicker.”
“I’m happy to report that the drug use and drug problems in Highbridge and Burnham have massively reduced on what they’ve been in previous years. We have had some really good success with that.”
Neighbourhood Sergeant Piscina added that one ongoing issue that is a priority for Police in Burnham and Highbridge is tackling anti-social behaviour.
“We’ve had some spikes in anti-social behaviour as we’ve come out the other side of lockdown. We know that there was there are problems around the clock tower area in Highbridge. Because of the large teams we’ve now got, we’ve extended our patrols and that’s helped to reduce the issue. We know it’s not gone away, but we just need to make sure that we stay on it.”
Burnham Police are also aware of ongoing issues in the Manor Gardens and in the Pier Street car park, which he said are a focus for local police operations.
He continued: “We have had to really adapt to the Covid situation to support acting on breaches which created an extra 2,500 calls this year. We’ve temporarily lost some staff here and there along the way because people have had to self-isolate – that’s been a bit of a problem for us, but the step-up in testing has helped to counteract that.”
“When the Covid calls first started to come in, we really wondered how we were going to cope with the extra demand, but we have stayed on top of it and we’ve also been able to keep our emergency response time under five minutes for 999 calls.”
“I’m pleased with the increase that we’ve seen on the streets in terms of patrols – it’s so far so good and hopefully we’ll have a better 2021.”
Burnham and Highbridge’s Mayor Cllr Mike Facey thanked Neighbourhood Sergeant Piscina and the team for their work on behalf of the council and the two towns.
