The election of the next Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire takes place on 6 May. There are four candidates: read about them all here
A toughened approach to crack down on County Lines drug dealing would be the top of marketing specialist Philip Allott’s agenda if he is named the new commissioner on 7 May.
The former pupil at King James’ School Knaresborough said despite the best endeavours of North Yorkshire Police and the regional crime unit, County Lines dealers “are obviously still very active in North Yorkshire”.
Dismissing a suggestion that the issue was persisting due to a lack of resources to tackle it, he said government funding was being directed to the regional crime unit.
He said: “The thing I am interested in is making the drug dealers lives a misery. In many cases there is intelligence and we can use that intelligence to stop vehicles on suspicion, particularly cross-border.”
Mr Allott said he would push for further work to enable teachers to spot pupils who are part of County Lines drug dealing, help housing associations to identify cuckooing and action to spot children carrying drugs on railways.
He said: “The police on their own are not going to solve this and I see my role as working with different agencies, getting them all on board and actually communicating with each other, sharing intelligence and working for the greater good.”
Mr Allott said as commissioner he would also foster closer working with other agencies, launching a “complete reset” between the councils and the commissioner’s office.
He said: “We should be working for the greater good. I see the councillors from each of the different authorities as the eyes and ears of the commissioner. I see it as a partnership approach and that’s perhaps a very different way of looking at things.”