Police force adds 30 more officers to patrols

A police force has increased the number of patrols across a city with 30 additional officers, a police and crime commissioner said.

Darryl Preston, the commissioner for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, said between October 2025 and January there were an extra 12,500 hours of additional patrols across the county supported by the Hotspot Action Fund.

A report noted that Cambridgeshire Police received £749,456 between June 2025 and January 2026 from the government via its Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee programme.

Preston said officer visibility was "important" and was "about reassurance".

The Hot Spot Action Fund was introduced by the Home Office to enable police forces to deploy patrols in areas with high rates of serious violence and antisocial behaviour.

When reporting to members of the Cambridgeshire Police and Crime Panel at Sand Martin House, Peterborough, on Wednesday, Preston said in city centre there had been an additional 1,779 hours of visible patrols.

In the Lincoln Road area of the city there had been an additional 539 hours and in Viersen Platz and Rivergate areas there was an increase of 214.

Preston's report to the panel also showed there was an additional 95 hours in an area titled "Peterborough Knife Hex", which is a part of the city the size of 10 football pitches where knife crime and violence is concentrated, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

Preston said: "We have an additional 30 officers now aligned to neighbourhood policing teams."

However, he added, the force was still "some way off" fully complying with the government's policy to have 13,000 extra recruits.

He said all residents now had a named police officer dedicated to the area and that there was still a "requirement for those officers to respond to concerns within 24 hours".

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