An Interview with Surrey Police & Crime Commissioner, Lisa Townsend

I was lucky enough to catch up with Lisa Townsend, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Surrey, where we spoke about how she got into the role and some of her experiences serving the community.

By Jamie Di Francescomarino

To start off, how would you introduce yourself to someone in Surrey who might not know much about the Police and Crime Commissioner role?

“The Police and Crime Commissioner is there to be the people’s voice in policing, both in terms of representing the community to the Chief Constable, but also in some cases representing the Force to the community.”

“The important thing is that Commissioners are not police officers. Some in the past have previously been officers, but there are nearly 4,500 members of Surrey Police. You don’t need another one sitting in the Police and Crime Commissioner’s chair. We’re members of the public, elected by other members of the public, in order to represent their voice in policing.”

What was it about Surrey that made you want to serve this particular community?

“I’ve lived here in Surrey for 15 years and my husband is born and bred in Surrey! This is my community, and I really wanted to be the one to represent it.”

What first inspired you to get into public service and eventually become Surrey’s Police and Crime Commissioner?

“I’ve been involved in politics properly since university. However, I did get involved with politics at school as I was the Conservative candidate in my school’s mock election when I was 17, which was 1997. From that, the local MP invited me to the House of Commons, which was my first trip to Westminster. At university, I volunteered and then eventually worked for the Conservative Party.”

“What that job taught me – apart from the complexity of politics – was that actually you do have a role, whether it’s in Parliament as a member of staff or as an elected politician, to help people when they are sometimes at their most desperate, and to navigate a complicated system to get them the right outcome.
“I think that those of us who are lucky enough to work within the system and, more specifically, those who are elected to represent the community, can make a real difference. That’s ultimately what keeps me doing it.”

Can you share a memorable day or achievement in the role that really stood out for you?

“One thing I love doing is speaking in schools. The questions I take from children and young people are so genuine, and you can have conversations with them that can also help to change my mind on certain things.”

“I was at a school recently and a young boy stood up and asked, ‘What can I do to keep my friends safe?’, and that’s just the best question. My answer was, ‘Friends don’t let friends carry knives,’ because you are three times more likely to be a victim of knife crime if you, yourself, are carrying a knife. If you are a victim of knife crime, there’s a 70 per cent chance it’s your own knife that was used against you.”

“As a result, I will always say, ‘Don’t carry a knife, don’t let your friends carry knives and also never get into a car with someone who’s been drinking’.”

Has there been a particular project or initiative you’ve supported that made a real difference to a resident or community, where you could see the impact directly?

“The biggest one at the moment is the Safer Redhill work we’ve done, which is going to be replicated across the county.”

“It brought together a number of initiatives, including Clear, Hold, Build.”

“It’s lovely to see the enormous difference it’s made. Redhill was the area where I got the most correspondence from residents, but now when I speak to the community, they say how you can really see the difference.”

“The police worked really hard to deal with any criminality in the first place, and then the council came in and we worked with them.”

“That’s how Clear, Hold, Build works – police relentlessly pursue criminals to ‘clear’ an area, maintain a hold over that location to prevent further offending, and then work with partners to build resilience so the positive changes are maintained.”

What’s something about your job that might surprise people?

“How varied it is. I could spend a morning chairing the Criminal Justice Board with the region’s prison governors, probation service staff and judges, and then in the afternoon I could be helping to paint a mural at a local school or talking to a group of teenagers or even joining officers on night shifts wearing a stab vest and talking to the community.”

What’s the most rewarding feedback you’ve had from a resident or local group about your work?

“I can’t say too much on this, but I recently worked with a woman who had gone through the most horrendous experience with her children as a result of criminality committed by her ex-husband. She had come to me via her local counsellor.”

“I was able to help her and together, we achieved a policy change. She got back in touch further down the line to say her father had been dying, and she was able to tell him before he died that she’d managed to get the change put through. She felt he died happy knowing this.”

Can anyone get in touch with you?

“It’s so important to know that absolutely anyone can get in touch if they have anything at all they need to ask or tell me about. “We’re a small team, but we try to help as many people as we can, and if for nothing else, to point them in the right direction and get them the support they need.”