LYME Regis town councillors have branded a community policing initiative a ‘cop out’ and are calling for a better police presence in the town.

Members of the town management and highways committee were asked to consider Lyme Regis becoming involved in the Dorset Police Community Safety Accreditation Scheme (CSAS) at a meeting last week.

The scheme allows organisations and their employees, who are involved in community safety or traffic management, limited power to tackle low level crime and disorder, as well as anti-social behaviour.

This can include requesting the name and address of someone committing an offence, seizing alcohol or tobacco from those underage and power to issue penalty notices to tackle anti-social behaviour.

Cllr Brian Larcombe said the scheme carries hardly any authority and the powers seem no more than a civil arrest.

He said: “I can understand the want, but I think it is a cop out.

“I think the answer to our problem is to get proper policing and not this kind of thing, which, if we had this, suggests everything in Lyme is now ok because we are going to have vigilante groups with little arm bands, trying to do things which they really don’t have the authority for.”

To join the scheme, organisations would have to pay an initial approval fee of £1,400 plus VAT before training costs and accreditation of individual employees.

Cllr Michela Ellis said: “We already pay for policing in our council tax, I would hate to see the ratepayers of this town having to pay twice, in effect, for policing.

“I think you will find if we start paying for this, it’s going to be something that will spread elsewhere and we are going to end up with no police on any streets anywhere.

“What we need to do is try and arrange another appointment with the police and crime commissioner to speak about policing in the town and we need to be encouraging people in the town to be phoning the police if there is a problem, because without statistics, we won’t get a police presence.”

Cllr Larcombe added: “We have gone from constables with proper policing and powers of arrest, to PCSOs and this, that we are now talking about, is a level even lower than a PCSO, which is part time anyway.

“I don’t think we should be asking our enforcement officers to be out there undertaking this kind of confrontational stuff.

“Quite frankly, this debate is a national debate, we are part of it and we should fall into place with other town councils that say ‘we pay our taxes, give us the resources that that revenue produces’.”

Members agreed to go no further with this scheme and to continue lobbying to get a police presence in Lyme Regis.