Whitchurch police accused of missing crime because of a lack of officers by mayor

Rob Hewson, mayor of Whitchurch, said there are currently issues with under age drinking in Jubilee Park and he had not seen any police in the area recently.

He said: "When the nice weather comes along a lot of people head to Jubilee Park.

"There have been a lot of under age drinkers there and no police to move them away.

"The police presence in our town is terrible.

"We are not getting what we used to with police presence. It is not acceptable to Whitchurch and the people.

"We can't even go to the police station as they closed the front reception.

"We have brought the issue up with the police officers in the area and we are waiting to see the response.

"We need more police for the town."

West Mercia Police said it remained committed to tackling crime and anti-social behaviour in the area, even though resources are prioritised.

Superintendent David McWilliam, for West Mercia Police, said: "We are fully committed to protecting our communities from harm and delivering high quality public services. That will always be our goal.

"Shropshire is a large geographical area to cover and policing is now much more a border-less issue with resources deployed via our Operational Command and Control unit (OCC ) to meet with demand wherever that may be.

"We deploy and prioritise incidents based on protecting the public from harm. Our officers will spend the majority of their day patrolling areas and communities. Our patrol teams, safer neighbourhood teams (SNTs), CID, dogs and other specialist resources are all part of the team that are available to all our communities when needed. These resources come from a variety of places across the West Mercia Policing area on a day to day basis.

"Where their physical base is, is much less relevant to policing our communities, it is our job to get the staff where they are needed. Senior managers in both areas and force resources in OCC work together to make this happen as smoothly as possible.

"As a result of changes we made in 2013 the patrol resources that used to report out of Whitchurch now report out of Market Drayton. That means that there is still 24/7 coverage in Whitchurch and the surrounding areas (five teams of patrol officers) but the resources come from Market Drayton instead.

"We still have a Safer Neighbourhood Team dedicated to Whitchurch and they work out of Whitchurch Police Station. The team is committed to addressing longer term issues of crime and antisocial behaviour in Whitchurch and this includes underage drinking in the town."