MP slams cuts to police budget

Ashfield MP Gloria de Piero was in her office when the incident took place - she offered thoughts to the injured police officer.

Gloria De Piero, Labour MP for Ashfield, said government cuts to police force budgets have left the Nottinghamshire force short-staffed and allowed crime to rise.

New figures released by the Home Office show there were 1,837 police officers in Nottinghamshire Police in March 2017 – down 136 from the year before.

This number is a cut of nearly 24 per cent from the number of officers in the force in 2010, when there were 2,409.

The drop in officers comes as data from the Office for National Statistics shows there was a 12 per cent rise in the total number of crimes committed in Nottinghamshire in the year ending March 2017, compared to the year before.

There were rises in the number of offences of violence against the person – up by 23 per cent to 21,968 – and sexual offences – up by 20 per cent to 2,497.

Ms De Piero said: “It can be no coincidence that crime has started to rise as police numbers fall for the seventh year in a row.

“Locally, the effects of having fewer police officers in Ashfield have been telling for some time – there simply aren’t enough officers to go out on every report of a crime that residents make and residents are rightly upset about that.

“This situation cannot go on – our police must be given the resources they need to properly fight crime in our area and make people feel safe.”