Hertfordshire chief constable announces plans to improve neighbourhood policing

By the end of this month there will be “a named police officer for every community” published on the force’s website – with contact details.

And chief inspectors will be told to make sure any officer not busy with paperwork should be out on patrol, rather than in the station.

Andy Prophet – who took over as chief constable of the Hertfordshire Constabulary in January – wants officers to be “out walking on foot patrol more than they are in cars”.

And on Wednesday he outlined his vision to members of the county council’s public health and community safety cabinet panel.

“I spent 10 years as a constable and a sergeant doing response and neighbourhood policing,” said the chief constable, who was formerly deputy chief constable for Essex Police.

“So I see the crime and the harm that happens if you get that wrong.

“It is fundamentally what I believe policing is about at its heart – being visible being in communities dealing with problems at their grass-roots.

“So that is […] what I am working with my organisation – and hopefully with you as partners – to achieve.”

The chief constable described the role of the police as being to “prevent crime and solve crime”, with looking after people, helping people and supporting victims being a part of that.

And he told councillors: “We prevent crime and we solve crime.

“Keep it really simple. Back to basics. Every one of my people should be thinking about that. That is my expectation of them.”

He said the 100k crimes reported to the constabulary in a year, was “a relatively low number” compared to the county’s 1.2m population and when benchmarked nationally. But he stressed that it was still “too many”.

He pointed to ongoing work on “visibility and getting the basics of crime investigation right”. And he said that by targeting the right places and the right people, he was confident they could drive down crime.

He talked about focussing the presence of officers in the county on known crime hotspots, such as high streets, parks and gathering places.

And he stressed the importance of good community engagement, ensuring the force did not have blind-spots of information.

“We know where crime happens and, broadly speaking, we tend to know who does the crime, because we understand who the criminals are,” he said.

“So getting into the right places, targeting the right people – place and people – is the strategy that you will see, I hope, unfold in your communities.

“That means that comes as a consequence, because I will deploy the people where the bad things are happening. But it won’t be uniform.

“So you may well have in areas where we aren’t having crime problems, and we don’t know about crime problems, we might not deploy there as much and might not be as visible there.”

And he said that this was why it was really important to have good community engagement, “people who are reporting things”, to avoid blind-spots in information.

The chief constable told councillors that Hertfordshire was a “fantastic county with a huge partnership potential”.

He said Hertfordshire Constabulary was a “really strong organisation”, with “lots of potential to improve”.

But he also said he wanted the Constabulary to provide an “outstanding” service for the people of Hertfordshire.

Last year an HMICFRS inspection of the constabulary rated the service as ‘good’ in one inspection area, ‘adequate’ in three , ‘requires improvement’ in four and ‘inadequate’ in one.

And the chief constable vowed to councillors that by the time inspectors returned in autumn 2026 they would see improvement.

Andy Prophet took up the role in the Hertfordshire Constabulary on January 1, after serving in Essex Police for 29 years.