Rushcliffe Neighbourhood Policing Inspector Tim Cuthbert updates the community for the New Year.
Hello, and welcome to the latest Neighbourhood Policing Blog for Rushcliffe. A very happy New Year to you all.
December saw a sharp focus on both road safety and road crime offences, as we were supported by officers from the Operational Support Department for numerous road safety deployments. The results are really impressive, and I’d like to personally thank the Roads Policing and Road Crime officers for their hard work throughout the last month. From those officers alone, 276 vehicles were stopped, 61 vehicles were seized for identified offences, 53 arrests were made, and almost 100 traffic offence reports were submitted. Speeding operations throughout the borough led to over 600 speeding offences being captured, and targeted stops led to several arrests for offences such as drink or drug driving, burglary, weapons offences, and theft offences. Needless to say, the Operational Support teams will routinely be back in the area in the coming weeks and months, and I’m convinced their efforts will have gone some way towards making Rushcliffe’s roads a slightly safer place to be.
The freezing weather this week has been a real challenge not only for police officers, but also for colleagues from all emergency services, as we deal with road accidents or mechanical breakdowns. Please ensure that if you must travel in this weather, as previous communications from the police have suggested, you leave the house with warm clothing, your vehicle has plenty of fuel and a clear windscreen, and your vehicle is in good working order, with tyre tread not just within the legal limit but also in good condition to deal with cold, wet roads.
Following meetings with partner agencies at the end of 2025, I’ve revised our neighbourhood priorities slightly. These are decided due to a variety of factors, and whilst we’ve seen a drop in some of the crimes recorded in some key areas, I’m keen to maintain the focus on others.
Shop theft is one of them. Nationally, shoplifting is a problem which occupies a huge amount of officer time. Thankfully, in Rushcliffe, we’ve seen some fantastic reductions in shop theft when comparing the last quarter of 2024 with the last quarter of 2025. This reduction is around 20%, and is largely down to the hard work of the Bridgford NPT, who have charged and remanded several key offenders. Whilst that is great news, I’m keen to push on with that momentum and continue to work alongside local businesses which are impacted by this crime. We’ll be focusing some beat surgeries and engagement around the shops and businesses in Bridgford in particular in the coming weeks and months.
Secondly, theft of bikes is something which has emerged as an issue, with offences targeting schools in the area. My team will be submitting a problem management plan to tackle this issue, and whilst these offences are only in single figures, we’ll be working with schools and pupils to reduce the likelihood of these offences occurring by designing out the opportunities, as well as through proactive bike-marking events.
Thirdly, ASB in town centre locations. Whilst ASB reports have dropped by around 20% in the last 12 months, I’m aware of a handful of recent incidents which have caused some concern to local residents during the Christmas holiday period. We’ll seek to identify those involved and work with some of our key intervention youth workers to try to prevent issues arising again, and where necessary, take positive action to tackle them.
Some good news I’d like to share is that some crime statistics are going very much in the right direction. I’m not usually one to share statistics for statistics’ sake; however, following a number of key arrests towards the end of 2025, and a great deal of hard work from our CID colleagues and local officers too, we’ve seen a reduction in domestic burglaries in Rushcliffe of around 30% when we compare the last quarter of 2025 with the same period in 2024. I’m really grateful to the teams who have supported our work around this, and our job is to keep up that focus and energy into 2026.
Inspector Tim Cuthbert
NPI for Rushcliffe
