THE closure of police front counters across our county can only be bad for residents and good for criminals.

No one benefits from these closures, and the police wouldn’t try to pretend they do – they are a cost-saving measure.

Of course, we can sympathise with the force on that front: they do not get nearly the funding they would like from central Government, and are forced to make tough decisions like this.

They then have to justify it to a public who will understandably be distrustful, and they do so by saying that it reflects the change in the way most of us want to contact our local force: more of us use our phones and the internet for all communications, and that includes the police.

Again, that statement in itself is reasonable, but that doesn’t mean that closing down public-facing front desks will not have a detrimental effect.

How many thousands used those front desks in the past year? And what message does this send to criminals?

Most police officers will tell you that police visibility in any given area is an important deterrent to would-be offenders, and even a modest front counter, with people going in and out, is a useful visual reminder of a local force at work.

As Police and Crime Commissioner candidate Alan Robinson – himself a former police officer – says in today’s article, ‘Police stations were the heart of the community... There seems to be an obsession to disengage with the very public that we should be serving’.

He and his fellow PCC candidate John Howson have both criticised this decision to close front counters.

We also tried to contact the other two candidates for next Thursday’s election – Conservative Matthew Barber and Labour’s Laetisia Carter – but we didn’t hear back from them by the time we went to press.

If you care about local policing, then voting for one of these four candidates is your chance to have your say.

The vote is on Thursday – make yours count.