DROITWICH Spa police officers will not be deployed to Worcester, West Mercia's Chief Constable Paul West assures.

He said Spartans need not worry, as there are no plans to transfer police officers to Worcester city from other parts of the force area.

Recently Worcester's Labour MP Mike Foster made a public demand that more officers be assigned to the city beat.

However, Chief Constable West (pictured) was quick to reassure residents this would not happen. "The short answer is no," he said in an interview with the Advertiser last Thursday.

He explained West Mercia Constabulary employs a system to ensure the force area had an equitable level of coverage and there would be no deployment from Droitwich to Worcester. Chief Constable West, who took the top job last year, was in Droitwich as part of a series of regular visits to police stations across the force area.

He said it was an essential part of his job to visit stations across the force, which covers Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin. "It is important to me to meet the staff and communities whether they are close to head quarters at Hindlip Hall or all the way over at Oswestry."

The family man was last in Droitwich about two months ago. "This is a follow up visit and I will be spending some time on Westlands seeing the good work that has been done there and then going into the more rural parts of the town. One of the joys and challenges of Droitwich is that it combines rural areas with more urban," he said.

Chief Constable West added some of the main issues in Droitwich, as with many areas, was improving the quality of life for people and tackling anti social behaviour. He referred to the latest crime statistics for Droitwich, which showed levels of house burglary, violent crime and robbery were down substantially, and detection was up.

However, he said: "One of the areas, which continues to be a challenge for us is vehicle related crime."

He explained that because Droitwich is close to the motorway networks, it is a hotspot for opportunist criminals to make a quick getaway.

"We are looking at innovative new ways of tackling this."

He said he was also looking at ways to improve people's opinion of the police. "Certain figures suggest that people have a lower opinion of the police if they have had direct dealings with them. It is one of my personal aims to make sure that people who do have direct dealings with the police have an even higher opinion afterwards."

He said he had been very impressed by the quality staff across the area but was frustrated by inadequate resources because of unfair funding from central government. "To provide a decent level of service we have had to make a significant increase in council tax- we have got to make the money up somehow," he said gravely.

However, Chief Constable West said that all political parties represented in the force area were working in unison to try and improve the situation.

The matter will be debated in the House of Commons later this month.