HOW reassuring. Although recorded crimes in Wiltshire last year rose by almost nine per cent – a third more than the national average – we don’t need to worry our heads about it.

Because our Police and Crime Commissioner, Angus Macpherson, was expecting it. His statisticians forewarned him.

Violent crimes were up by a thumping 25 per cent, and sex offences by an eyewatering 40 per cent.

Racial and religiously aggravated offences showed a 47 per cent increase, admittedly from a low base figure.

Though it pains me to say so, our Commissioner must be right to an extent, in that some element of these increases must be due to what he calls “improved crime recording practices”.

It’s not as if there’s been a sudden influx of rabid right-wingers on our streets, thank goodness. We’d have noticed that.

Yet isn’t it rather insulting our intelligence to suggest that such huge increases in lawlessness are purely attributable to some kind of revolution in bureaucratic efficiency?

Particularly in a week when a woman was mugged at a bus stop in Quidhampton, of all places! Not exactly a hotbed of criminality.

And when an entire regiment has just been banned from our biggest nightclub and two city centre bars?

We must surely consider whether other changes in the world of law’n’order, including the closure of our custody unit, have had an effect.

With the best will in the world, having no cell block nearer than Melksham might deter officers from reaching for the handcuffs when they could just issue a ticking-off instead.

Miscreants are perfectly able to carry out that risk assessment for themselves.

But suppose Mr Macpherson’s ‘Keep calm and carry on’ message is justified.

Doesn’t it beg the question of what was happening previously?

Why couldn’t crimes be recorded accurately in the past?

It would be encouraging if his assertion that victims nowadays have greater confidence in reporting offences proved to be correct.

However, the Police Federation, representing rank-and-file members of the ever-thinner blue line, is claiming that constant cuts and reorganisations have damaged the public’s faith in the force at a time when workloads are increasing.

Pretty much what you’d expect both sides to say, really. There’s not much meeting of minds going on there.

Who do we believe? Search me. (On second thoughts, please don’t, Officer!) Meanwhile, I’m relieved to see that our hospital bosses are taking no chances with on-site security and beefing it up themselves, to the tune of £125,000.

Funded by doctors, nurses and support staff who face 14 per cent higher parking charges for the privilege of getting on with their invaluable work.

anneriddle36@gmail.com