While overall crime in the UK has been falling for some time, I know that this is not a reality recognised or enjoyed by all.

Everyone deserves the security and confidence that comes from having a safe street.

The Beating Crime Plan sets out the Government’s strategy for continuing to reduce crime, in line with its ambition to level up the country.

Its priorities, which have been adopted by our Cheshire Police & Crime Commissioner John Dwyer, are to:

– reduce murder and other homicide;

– reduce serious violence;

– disrupt drug supply and county lines;

– reduce neighbourhood crime;

– improve satisfaction among victims, with a particular focus on victims of domestic abuse;

– tackle cybercrime, and

– tackle acquisitive crime, including burglary and theft.

Homicide, serious violence, and neighbourhood crime are concentrated in specific neighbourhoods, with nearly a quarter of neighbourhood crime concentrated in just five per cent of local areas.

The plan focuses on places where these crimes occur, the people who commit them, and the criminal enterprises that fuel the drug trade.

Alongside the existing funding for the Safer Streets Fund and Violence Reduction Units, the plan sets out preventative and punitive measures to make our streets safer.

I especially welcome the Government’s commitment to ensuring every person living in England and Wales can access the police digitally through a national online platform.

In addition, I am particularly pleased that the plan includes more than £45 million in specialist teams in schools and alternative provision in serious violence hotspots to support young people in re-engaging with education.

In Cheshire, the Beating Crime Plan is working. Crime overall is down 17.5 per cent since the plan’s inception in July 2021, particularly in anti-social behaviour, robbery, violent crime, criminal damage and arson, theft from the person, and public order categories.

I also know how determined the commissioner is to continue tackling shoplifting and drugs.

The plan includes tactics and investments to deal with illegal drugs, such as increasing police use of drug testing on arrest, and delivering a cross-Government summit to develop measures to drive down demand for illicit drugs.

I hope this reassures you – as it does me – crime rates in Cheshire are decreasing, and our constabulary knows what to tackle with the tools it has been given.