Jess Brown-Fuller

The hon. Member is absolutely right to highlight that the funding formula does not reflect the seasonal pressures I see in my coastal constituency. To describe Selsey to those who have never been there—I look forward to welcoming colleagues in the summer—there is one road in and one road out. Selsey means “seal island”, and it is a very isolated community. There is one police constable and two PCSOs to cover not only Selsey but Sidlesham, Hunston, North Mundham and some harbour villages. On a summer’s day, it would take an officer at least an hour to travel from one end of the patch they are meant to cover to the other, yet they are meant to have an acute understanding of the area and its problems. I went out last summer with a PC who had responsibility for Selsey. Local residents turned and stared at us as though they had never seen a police officer walking the streets of Selsey. When I asked the PC the last time he had done a walkabout, he had to admit that he had never done one before because of the administrative pressures in managing his workload. At the other end of my constituency, towards the South Downs national park, farmers are creating WhatsApp chats to support each other in monitoring illegal activity on their land, whether that is equipment and tool theft or hare coursing, because of their isolation and the lack of provision in the Sussex police rural crime team. Why are we in this position? For starters, it is because police forces were recklessly hollowed out, and the number of PCSOs was decimated, by the previous Government.