LABOUR'S candidate for the upcoming police, fire and crime commissioner (PFCC) election has said his priority would be to ensure every electoral ward in the county has its own, named police officer should he top the poll.

Cumbrians are set to go to the polls on Thursday, May 2 in order to vote for the county’s next PFCC with incumbent, Peter McCall stepping down.

Labour’s candidate, David Allen, was raised in Grange Over Sands and Cartmel and joined Cumbria Constabulary in 1986 where he was posted to Carlisle.

He has had numerous roles both in uniform and plain clothes and has experience working in the county and was stationed in Carlisle, Barrow and Workington, rising through the ranks to superintendent.

In 2000 he was seconded to the National Criminal Intelligence Service, oversaw the UK's policing response to crack cocaine and ultimately leading its anti-corruption unit.

He led the UK’s Bureau at Europol in the Hague, tackling serous organised crime affecting Europe and led the UK Fugitive Bureau as well as the UK Interpol and Europol Bureaus at the National Crime Agency before retiring in 2016 as Head of The UK International Crime Bureau.

“I've knocked on hundreds if not thousands of doors in the last 14 months and people are concerned with anti-social behaviour,” said Mr Allen.

“People are concerned about the fact that you never see a police officer.

“There's not community engagement from the police with the public and what we're clearly seeing is as a result of the last 14 years of austerity and cuts, the police have withdrawn quite dramatically from the public, slowly but surely.

“We’ve had 16 police stations closed in Cumbria. There's been a 25 per cent reduction in the civilian staff, which means that actually the extra officers that we've had in the last couple of years are now working in back-office functions rather than on the front line dealing with the public.

“If you don't have that community engagement, you don't have that sense of policing by consent, that sense and effectively what I'm seeing is people saying, we're not in touch with the police, are they actually here for us?”

Home Office figures show there were 1,395 Cumbria Constabulary officers in September last year.

It was a slight increase of four officers from six months earlier in March, and up from September 2022, when 1,288 were recorded as part of the government’s drive to recruit 20,000 new officers.

Read our candidate interviews:

“It is a wicked problem because this has been 14 years in the making," he said.

“There’s been a gradual withdrawal of officers, reduction in services and a reduction in back office functions.

“One example of which is Cumbria has one of the worst performances in relation to firearms and shotgun certificate issues.

“It's taken between 12 and 18 months for people to get a firearms certificate - that's just ridiculous.

“The solution, to be very honest, is difficult under a Conservative government.

“I'll have to use the resources that we currently have but I definitely think we can use what we have better, making sure that we have a named officer for every electoral ward.

“Making sure that people know who they are. Making sure that those community officers, the PCSOs that serve those communities, are out and about and engaging with them.”

Members of Cumbria police, fire and crime panel approved measures to raise the council tax precept for the police by 4.36 per cent and for the fire service by 2.98 per cent when they met on January 31.

The proposed increase in the precept will see a Band D council taxpayer pay £12.96 more to the police and £2.70 more to the fire service each year.

“The reason I'm standing is that I saw my precept rising every year but I saw less and less police on the streets," he said.

“I'm a Cumbrian, I've lived here all my life and I want this to be better, it should be better.

“We're paying more and more for it, why isn't it better? And the answer to that is, they're not managing the service very well.

"Are they actually holding the chief officers to account? Are they using the resources within those two services to the best effect? I would probably suggest not and that needs to change.”