OPCC Meeting - 26 Nov 2025
November 27, 2025•364 words
Along with Cllr Richard Dean (Dursley) and Cllr Steve Robinson (Nailsworth) I attended an OPCC briefing at the constabulary yesterday. Stroud District well represented! Here are some of my informal notes and comment. The agenda was roughly:-
- Role of OPCC
- Performance
- Serious Violence
- Police and Crime Prevention Plan
tbh, it became a bit free format with the sheer number of questions from the councillors. There was a hard hitting video by Josh Hall's parents and the devastating aftermath of knife crime for both family and community (there's a link to the video in the release).
A really impressive talk by Neil Smith about work being done in the in partnership with some notable companies to help disadvantaged youngsters. All 'top-secret' in the loosest sense of the word, but ground breaking work nonetheless. It really begs the question about how this critically important work will continue once the PCC and OPCC disappear.
The best bit from my point of view was the Performance Monitoring. During the break I managed to collar Rob Gleed to ask him about some troubling stats uncovered for us by Stop Watch who I'm working with along with Stroud Against Racism. Rob was like a lieutenant colonel in charge of a battalion of SQL Servers taking me through the analytical app on his laptop..... We couldn't quite identify the issue, but it really was impressive use of technology. From the general conversation it appears that half the OPCC/Constabularies in the country don't have access to this level of analytics. Again, this makes me think how short sighted the recent PCC-OPCC announcement was.
The critical point for me, is the promised monitoring of disproportionality which I received from the DPCC at a recent Panel meeting. It became clear in general conversation that there are no definitions or consensus of what needs to be tracked. That, in my opinion, means that the PCC is really going to struggle on delivering Priority 6 (Improving trust and confidence in policing) in the Police and Crime Plan. This is going to be my focus over the next quarter as the constabulary budgets are set.