THE police inspector responsible for Ivybridge has moved to allay fears of a drastic reduction in officers.

At a meeting of the full Ivybridge Town Council in June, councillors and the public were alarmed to be told that Ivybridge would now have 10 patrol officers, a reduction of five.

But at a subsequent meeting with Insp Adrian Leisk, then sector inspector for Kingsbridge and Ivybridge, mayor David Gray-Taylor was ‘assured’ that this was inaccurate. Insp Leisk, now temporary chief inspector, told the mayor Ivybridge had previously had 13 officers, three of whom were trainees.

Insp Andy Tomlinson is covering the sector temporarily. He said the cut was indeed down to trainees moving elsewhere, but that the ­figure of 10 officers was the ‘norm’.

‘This is a fairly difficult subject and the numbers are quite hard to compare directly,’ he said. ‘I worked in Ivybridge quite a long time ago and the situation in the past was that there were generally two officers per sector.

‘This increased slightly for administrative reasons, and now we’re getting back to where we should be. There’s been a slight reduction because the training officer isn’t based there ­anymore, but officers who are being trained go to different areas anyway, as they want to spend time in the area they’ll be posted to.

‘The aspiration is to have 10 ­officers in Ivybridge, as we do now, which is the historical norm.

‘The reality is that the South Hams operates as one unit, and officers from any South Hams station regularly move to any other when needed.

‘There’s another part to this as well, which is that, when we had artificially inflated numbers, we sometimes moved officers to a place of need on occasions.

‘The idea of this is that we reduce that level of abstraction.’

Insp Tomlinson added that a replacement for Insp Leisk is in line, although he is currently committed elsewhere. He confirmed that no reduction is planned in the number of inspectors.