Councillor Ken Hind Longridge Councillor and  Leader of the Ribble Valley Borough Council has called on the Police and Crime Commissioner Clive Grunshaw to end the policy of retreating from rural policing .

Ken Hind commented '' We all have difficult decisions to make in government and local government about public spending but the former Labour County Councillor Clive Grunshaw is exercising his spending priorities to move resources from predominantly Conservative supporting areas to the urban centres where Labour's support is at its strongest. 

My deputy, Councillor  Paul Elms and Deputy Chairman of the Police and Crime Panel, a retired career police officer, has calculated that for  every £5 collected in council tax for the police from Ribble Valley residents only £1 is spent in the Borough. 

Police officers who cover  the largest rural area in Lancashire , the Ribble Valley are based in Colne . An incident in a village like Slaidburn or Longridge could  take the police as long as  40 minutes to respond to as they are so far away. The Police Station in Longridge is partially closed and not open to the public. This is all putting the safety of rural communities at risk. 

The latest blow in this policy to which we are  strongly opposed is to close the front office in Clitheroe Police station. In this issue I support the efforts of Unison the trade union representing the civilian staff who man the front desk to keep it open. Members of the public who require police assistance or want to produce documents will now have to go to Blackburn , Burnley or Preston for this service. The large rural area of Ribble Valley will have  no front desk police presence, all the police stations will be closed to the public . This breaking the links between police and communities. 

As a lawyer practising in crime for 42 years I can say the message to the professional criminals  is that the Ribble Valley is potentially under policed and vulnerable to crime. The Ribble Valley residents  are merely asking for a fair distribution of police resources. 

The Ribble Valley Borough  Council is leading the fight to make sure the Police station in Clitheroe remains active and open to the public as the last remaining in the Borough .I hope the public , town and parish councils will support us in this matter and write to Mr Grunshaw to urge him to reverse this proposal .For Longridge residents we should press him to reopen the Longridge police station as serving the western end of the Ribble Valley even further away from Colne.

The public need to made aware that Ribble Valley Council spend £100,000 a year running and maintaining the CCTV systems in Clitheroe Whalley and Longridge , spending that normally would be expected to fall on the police budget .In addition we pay for police crime support officers PCSOs  to assist the police. As a council we are doing our bit and want to work with and support the police in protecting the people of the Ribble Valley.