Gloucestershire police won’t see a drop in performance despite cutting 60 staff jobs over the next year. That is the pledge from Temporary Chief Constable Maggie Blyth who says the force is facing some tough decisions in plugging Gloucestershire Constabulary’s £12.3m funding gap.

Around 30 to 40 police community support officers (PCSOs) are being made redundant and the force’s mounted unit is being transferred to West Midlands Police.

The force said it is committed to focussing on what matters most to the public in tackling crime. And despite these reductions in PCSOs, the constabulary is looking to increase the number of police officers.

They will fill vacancies in crime command to bolster investigations, particularly in public protection, child abuse teams and for neighbourhood crime.

The constabulary will implement a rapid improvement plan over the next year.

This will set out how they intend to transform some of our work, continue to provide an effective service, and improve their performance.

“We will not see any drop in our performance,” Temporary Chief Constable Blyth said.

“We have to maintain performance in 999 calls, in how we investigate crimes.

“The charge rates from everything from burglaries, tackling serious organised crime, through to domestic abuse.

“We are under immense scrutiny with that.” She said the plan is very much ensuring our focus is on what the public expects of them. Incidents rather than crimes.

And Temporary Chief Constable Blyth is meeting with all of the force’s leadership to discuss the rapid improvement plan.

“We have to focus on crime,” she said.

“Our job is to reduce crime, cut crime and respond to 999 and 101 calls.

“That might mean there are things we cannot continue to do if it’s not in our performance measures.

“We want to and will continue to work with other organisations but our focus must be on our areas where police have additional warranted to do.

“We are going ahead with our plan on how we are reorganising our neighbourhood police teams and it will see an increase in police numbers.

“We are going to be focused on the areas that matter most to people.”

She said the force wants to achieve “excellence in the basics”.

“I’m meeting every sergeant in the organization over the next few weeks. I’m meeting all of our senior leaders this week and next week. That’s all our inspectors and above.

“I will be taking them through the Gloucestershire rapid improvement plan and saying I need you to help deliver this and to focus on this.

“It will be in your performance development review, your annual appraisal, how you are driving up performance in these areas.”

She said her most important message to the public is to rest assured that the force will continue to tackle crime despite the redundancies in staff and PCSOs.

“Today we are making some significant efficiency savings across Gloucestershire Constabulary and changing some of the work that we do.

“The most important message from me, and the reassurance that I want to give all of our communities is that we will continue to answer our 999 calls, investigate crime and be there in our local communities in a very focused and strong way.

“You can expect our frontline services to be protected and you can expect our service to continue to improve.”