DORSET Police officers and staff have submitted more than 100 bids to a new fund aimed at enabling the Force to develop innovative projects and transform for the future.

Dorset Police and Crime Commissioner Martyn Underhill and Chief Constable James Vaughan set up the £1 million Innovation Fund in spring 2019, using money that had come from a combination of reserves and efficiency savings.

People from across the organisation were encouraged to come up with ideas and an Innovation Board was established to decide whether they were feasible.

Now, a report to the Police and Crime Panel – hosted by Dorset Council and aimed at scrutinising the work of the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner – has revealed that more than 100 bids were submitted over the first year.

Just over a third of these have already been turned into projects that are now up and running, with another 45 per cent now being developed.

The first board, which met in March 2019, provided funding for a range of schemes including the county’s first police cadet service as well as a bobby van, which was launched earlier this year and provides security measures to residents who have been victims of multiple burglaries.

Other schemes since developed include a system in which statements from victims or witnesses of crime can be taken over the phone, and emailed across so they can be signed via a secure platform.

The fund also set up an automated facility giving initial advice and links to support services to victims of domestic abuse. The pilot scheme, set up as a result of victims saying there was no one-stop shop for support, is being used alongside existing professional advice services.

And a trial joint response unit, crewed by a police officer and a paramedic, was set up between Dorset Police and the South Western Ambulance Service Trust to run over a three month period testing how well the scheme could boost public safety and manage demand.

This unit was deployed to more than 40 incidents in which both a police officer and a paramedic would normally have been dispatched, including a serious road traffic collision and a call for concern for an older woman who was safely returned to her carers with the help of both organisations’ data.