Over the past 12 months police officers and police community support officers have been looking at various strategies to get key messages out to different members of the community, either in an attempt to keep them informed on crime related issues or just to deliver information that we feel would be of benefit to them.

Public meetings, leaflet distribution, web pages and beat surgeries have always been a big part of neighbourhood policing and will no doubt continue to be so. But for whatever reason, these have not always proven successful.

Surgeries rely on members of the public turning up at a specific venue, at a time and date dictated by ourselves, and I for one have, on several occasions, found myself sat in a community hall or library twiddling my thumbs for an hour waiting for non-existent residents to come and speak to me about any issues they feel are important.

I then leave questioning the point of it all and wondering if I could have done more to promote this type of meeting or if I would have been better served answering calls on my radio instead. Then, last month my police community support officers came up with a simple concept which runs along the lines of the old saying: "If the mountain won't go to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain".

It started with the need to inform residents on our patch about a small increase in domestic burglaries in the area where they lived. We did the usual – produced a standard letter, and placed a certain amount of crime prevention information inside, but we then added a street briefing notification informing them that between a certain time on a specified evening, we would be in their street where they could come out to meet us and we could give them all the information they needed to know about these offences and what we were doing as a district to address the problem. They could also raise anything else they felt was important for us to look at.

On the evening of the street briefing, my PCSOs arrived at the nominated streets and like ice cream men, they illuminated the police sign on their vehicle. With a bit of encouragement, the residents came out to meet them to discuss the problems in their area. My PCSOs met more than 60 residents in a couple of hours and the exchange of information was encouraging.

I know that since this meeting, a similar one in St George using this format also attracted more than 50 residents and we have since held one in a different area on our beat that had a similar attendance.

My faith in delivering information and the public's willingness to accept what we are trying to achieve has been restored and that is in no short measure due to my PCSOs and the residents in those respective areas.

Thank you all and have a safe and happy Christmas and a happy new year.