It’s not everyday that I talk crime in a walled garden on a deer farm.

And most residents of South Yorkshire, living in a city, a town or other urban area, probably never associate crime with the countryside anyway. Woods and fields, rivers and meadows are where we go for pleasant walks at the weekend and to get away from the darker aspects of urban life. So what was I doing?

Last Friday I joined local farmers, South Yorkshire police officers and the rural adviser for the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) North, to talk about wildlife and rural crime. Being a sunny day, we sat outdoors with a herd of ivory limbed and brown eyed deer (Oscar Wilde) just over the wall, looking on quizzically. Although most of our crime happens in urban areas, we also have crimes in rural areas and the farms within them; and since farmers also pay council tax they must have their fair share of police time and resource.

Libby Bateman, from the CLA, led a conversation about wildlife crime – from hare coursing to deer poaching – and rural crime – from theft of agricultural machinery to fly tipping and livestock worrying. Our focus was on what can be done to bring perpetrators to justice and to safeguard farming families. We also noted that during the last year, after an initial fall, there were probably more people in the countryside than ever before.

But until the last year or so, police resources have not really been adequate to deal with much wildlife and rural crime. Some farms are quite remote and the police in rural areas were often pulled away to tackle incidents elsewhere.

There is now, however, a serious attempt to do more – and we discussed this. At our meeting was a sergeant (Mark Gregory) and two officers (Amanda Brundell and Rachel Attwell) who have expertise in rural crime and are based at Ring Farm, Cudworth, with the Mounted Section. More will join them later this year and next to create a dedicated Rural Crime Team. In addition, officers more generally, and call handlers, have been trained to understand better the issues raised by crime and antisocial behaviour in the countryside, and some 40 officers are now accredited Wildlife Crime Officers, carrying out this role alongside their other duties.

But what will make the real difference will be the ability of the rural crime officers to work closely with the local authorities and other specialist officers in the force. This will enable them to deal effectively with those organised gangs who carry out some of the most serious crime. These other units include Roads Police Officers, the off-road bike team and the armed response teams, as well as the local neighbourhood teams. I detect a new and real determination to make a substantial difference in the years ahead.

We have agreed to meet again with the CLA in six months’ time to check progress. In the meantime, I am left with an abiding memory of the deer with their half curious, half anxious look, a projection of animal vulnerability that makes them so appealing.

Money, money, money

Meanwhile, the word from Whitehall is that work is beginning in the Treasury on the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR). The CSR is the government’s spending plan for each of its departments for the coming three years. This is vital information for every organisation in the public sector, because we shall then be able to see how much we are likely to receive each year in grant – one of the core elements of our funding. For policing, that mainly means understanding what funding the Home Office will get and give.

Knowing this allows us to make our own financial planning more realistic and certain. If I know what we are going to receive by way of grant over three years, I can look ahead over the same period to see how far that will cover likely demand on the service. That in turn will allow me to see how much we shall need to raise through the precept (council tax) and how much we will need to save, and how we can spread all this sensibly over three years.

The Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) is represented in talks with the Home Office and ministers by a Conservative lead PCC (Roger Hirst, Essex) and a Labour deputy. I have just been asked to be the Labour deputy. This arrangement allows PCCs to have some say in the submissions the Home Office will make to the Treasury in the CSR process.

What is important is being able to understand what the pressures on police budgets are going to be over the medium term – the result, for example, of a big expansion of police numbers – so that we can urge the government to give policing adequate funding. Otherwise, any lack of funding will fall on the council tax payer or lead to cut-backs elsewhere in the budget.

It will be a great relief to get away from single year financial settlements, where you never knew from one year to the next what the grant would be – reduction, flat cash, flat cash plus inflation.

It will also be good to get away from what the government has been doing for the past year under the pressures of coronavirus – giving a whole series of extra pots of funding for which bids had to be made. Government ministers have been like someone who, after years of living frugally, wins the lottery and starts to give cash away to equally impoverished friends and family.

As it happens, we have done very well, successfully bidding for each pot of funding – for Young People, Domestic Abuse, Safer Streets, and so on. But it has put great strain on people in my office, the police, the local authorities and the voluntary sector, as they have had to write detailed bid after detailed bid and return them by the due dates. (Some PCCs have employed extra staff just to watch out for funding announcements and write bids.)

We have been surprised and grateful to get this one-off funding, but it cannot go on for ever.

And so to Rotherham …

I am trying to get around the county to meet some of the newish neighbourhood teams. This week I spoke with the teams based at Rawmarsh and Riverside, Main Street, in Rotherham – both of them are co-located with local government officers. I remember visiting them a couple of years ago when we started to put back neighbourhood teams. Then, there were just a few officers, but now the teams were well into double figures.

The new recruits are, of course, very welcome, but the general public tends to believe that officers can be recruited and put on the streets just like that. In fact, this takes several years as officers are trained and given some experience of the job alongside seasoned colleagues. And it requires careful planning.

Speaking to the teams, I also became acutely aware of other pressures on them – more officers increase the demand for more lap tops and more vehicles. Without them, the expanding numbers are hobbled in how much they can do.

I feel more talking to the Chief Constable coming on.

Stay safe and well.