Greetings all,

I’d like to inform you that I have been selected to be the new Police Inspector for South Shropshire’s seven Safer Neighbourhood Teams and there will be a period of handover now until I go live on 1^st May from Acting Inspector David Meyer who has been sat in post since the start of the year.  Some of the work that I have seen him lead and manage for the parishes of South Shropshire has been superb and my thanks have gone to him and the team for their efforts so far this year.  I do acknowledge that there is always more to do in policing and for me this follows on with the basics: Visibility and Accessibility, fundamental parts of our Local Policing Community Charter (LPCC).

To introduce myself to those who I have not met or spoken to in the past, my name is Damien Kelly and it is a great honour to be able to return to South Shropshire where I have both worked and lived.  I spent my adolescent years growing up in South Shropshire on the border of North Herefordshire and I can think of nowhere better to police than an area I feel so passionate about keeping safe.   I flew the nest at a young age to seek a challenge in the Royal Air Force before finally settling down from all that travel into Policing which is something that has been part of my family in various parts of the UK since the mid-19^th century.  I am a forward-thinking embracer of change and advancement, but I do enjoy some traditional aspects of the policing role which I’ve spent my career fine tuning and balancing between the two.  The mixture of towns, villages, hamlets housed within the parishes of South Shropshire is one of the largest geographical neighbourhood policing areas in the UK.  In fact, the area is only a few square miles smaller than all the Greater Manchester Policing area entirely!  With that geography and 83 active parish councils comes with some great advantages and complicated disadvantages which I’m sure you are more than aware of and I’m keen to manage a balance of resources, demands and priorities to an area of such size. 

I’m not expecting a response from everyone that this email reaches but now you have my contact information, please feel free to contact me and the team with parishioners concerns that relate to policing the area and we will get back to you.  The team should be emailing out a few times a year anyway to update your three priorities and inform you of what is being done to tackle them.  The relationship between parish/town councils and Safer Neighbourhood policing teams is extremely important to achieve the safety, confidence and increase in quality of life for parishioners. My aim is to build on our engagement and visibility making best use of the tools available through the LPCC and the age-old techniques of simply picking up the phone or meeting up to discuss ways to improve/tackle concerns. Please know that as I will likely remain in post for some time now, I will work tirelessly for you and our communities to focus on the things that matter and I will do everything I can to successfully build confidence with the resources that I have to achieve it.

As a quick plug, if you haven’t already, please do create an account with www.neighbourhoodmatters.co.uk which is a platform that the neighbourhood teams use to deliver important messages on crime, appeals and ongoing incidents, and to communicate with members of the community that use it. If you could share this with your parishioners, friends and family to get the best out of this system, delivering live information and communicating with your policing teams will get a whole lot easier.

From 9 April to 20 May Shropshire Council is carrying out a six-week consultation on proposals to introduce an annual subscription fee of £52 for the collection of garden waste – and about the future operation of the council’s five household recycling centres. All householders in the county use our waste services and I want to encourage as many people as possible to take part in this consultation.

A leaflet can be downloaded from the consultation webpage – www.shropshire.gov.uk/gardenwastebudget2024.

The consultation website is the preferred and most efficient way for people to give their views, but attached is a PDF of the consultation survey document – please print this out for anyone who specifically requests a hard copy survey form Like councils all over the country Shropshire Council is facing unprecedented financial pressure, mainly due to growing demand for social care – and we must make £62m of savings in 2024/25.We’re proposing to charge for green waste collections as we must look at other ways of creating income so that we can protect essential frontline services for those residents most in need. While garden waste collections in Shropshire are currently free, 80% of English councils already charge for this service and many have been doing so for several years.

As part of the consultation, we’re also asking how we can reduce the cost of running our five household recycling centres.

We’re asking if people would be willing to pay more than £52 a year if the additional money was used to keep all five of our household recycling centres open, and for views on whether the opening times of some HRCs could be reduced.

The consultation also asks for people’s thoughts about a new permit/booking system for people visiting a recycling centre to ensure that these are only used by people from Shropshire.