PAUL West's first few days at Hindlip have brought good news and bad for West Mercia police's new Chief Constable.

The good is that his arrival in the Mercia hotseat coincides with news that the force has more officers than ever before.

The bad is that, however much his senior officers try to reassure the public that their lives and homes are safer than they think, too many people genuinely believe the opposite.

He's "delighted" by the successful recruitment drive, and promises that communities across the country's largest land-locked force area will all benefit from the extra police.

That'll be music to ears in Upton-upon-Severn, whose residents have failed to convince police that, just because the crime rate there isn't as high as on a major city estate, they shouldn't have to accept things the way they are.

We trust their warnings about vigilante action are only an expression of the frustration felt by law-abiding folk who believe they have as much right to a share of police time as anyone else who pays a police precept in their tax.

Whether or not those warnings are meant to be a message to the new man in charge, he knows now how they feel.

Just as we've long campaigned to see West Mercia's numbers reach an appropriate level, so we have enormous sympathy for Upton.

When the weekend comes, and its residents steel themselves for disturbances involving underage drinkers, drug-taking, fights and vandalism, how else are they supposed to feel but threatened and isolated?

Upton isn't Dodge City in need of a marshal to clean up. But neither is it a one-horse frontier settlement where the law drops in once a week.