Posted: Sun 8th May 2016

North Wales Police & Crime Commissioner Election Result Due

Wrexham.com for people living in or visiting the Wrexham area
This article is old - Published: Sunday, May 8th, 2016

The election result for North Wales Police & Crime Commissioner is expected some point this afternoon.

North Wales will get a new Police and Crime Commissioner today following a count of votes which were cast by members of the public on Thursday.

Coleg Cambria sports hall up in Deeside will be the centre of attention when counting gets underway this morning, a result is expected at around 2-3pm if things go to plan – and we will bring you the result as soon as possible!

The first PCC election in 2012 drew only 14.8% of the north Wales electorate, lower than the 15% national average across the 41 English and Welsh police areas, turnout was a peacetime low for a national election.

Figures from England, where results have already declared, appear to show an improvement in voter interest, largely down to the fact in many areas people were out voting in council elections at the same time.

In Cheshire, 24% of the electorate voted in the PCC election on Thursday up from 14% in 2012, and in a ‘shock’ result Labour’s David Keane narrowly beat Conservative incumbent John Dwyer by 2949 votes.

Turnout for North Wales is expected to be slightly higher than 2012 as it was conducted at the same time as the National Assembly election where 1,019,382 votes were cast– a turnout of 45.4%.

How the votes are counted.

The first preferences are counted, and if a candidate has received more than 50% of the votes cast they are elected.

If no candidate has more than 50% of the votes, all candidates apart from those in first and second place are eliminated.

The ballot papers showing a first preference for the eliminated candidates are checked for their second preference. Any second preference votes for the two remaining candidates are then added to the candidates’ first preference votes and the candidate with the most votes wins.

So, what do Police and Crime Commissioners do?

The Police and Crime Commissioner replaced local police authorities in 2012.

The Police and Crime Commissioner is responsible for holding the Chief Constable and police force to account on the public’s behalf.

The Police and Crime Commissioner oversees how crime is tackled in their area and aims to make sure the police are providing a good service.

The Police and Crime Commissioner role includes:

  • meeting the public regularly to listen to their views on policing
  • producing a police and crime plan setting out local policing priorities
  • deciding how the budget will be spent
  • appointing Chief Constables and dismissing them if needed

Lack of public awareness

One of the first tasks on the ‘to-do-list’ for north Wales’ new crime ‘Tsar’ is to address the lack of public awareness around PCC’s, who they are, and what they do.

Only nine out of ten members of the public say they can’t name their local Police and Crime Commissioner.

And out of those who can, 10% get it wrong! That’s according to a BMG Research poll for the Electoral Reform Society.

It gets worse, a ridiculously low figure of just 1% of 18-24-year-olds and only 5% of 25-34-year-olds can name their PCC, a role which commands a salary somewhere between £70,000 and £85,000 a year.

The poor showing in terms of awareness comes despite many PCC’s, including north Wales previous commissioner, Winston Roddick employing PR agencies to boost their public profiles.

Katie Ghose, Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society, said:

“It would seem that four years after police commissioners were introduced, the public are none the wiser about what they actually do. The fact that just one in ten can name their local PCC is an indictment of the whole approach to these roles and the election.

“There’s clearly a real lack of public engagement in this election and the last – something exacerbated by a total lack of information about the roles and often the candidates, too. In our survey of PCC candidates in 2012 we found that 88% thought public awareness of the election was low, and of these, 62% thought it was very low.

“In some cases the PCC areas cover millions of people – illustrating the problems many candidates have in reaching voters. The West Midlands area covers over two million voters, for example.

“There’s been very little coverage of the election this time, much as last time, and there will be big differences in turnout depending on where there are local elections. The fact that, unlike the November 2012 election, this vote coincides with (Assembly elections in Wales) council elections, will raise turnout – but much more needs to be done to learn the lessons from previous votes. There are just a few days to get the information out and encourage people to vote – so we hope everyone concerned pulls out all the stops to get the public involved in this important vote.

Check Wrexham.com later to see who has won…



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