I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a belated Happy New Year.

As ever, 2017 promises to be a busy year for the policing team in Watford as we continue to tackle crime to help keep our communities safe.

Throughout the year, our officers and volunteers will be engaging with residents at local events, focusing on Local Policing Priorities and hosting crime prevention days.

Where necessary, we will also be carrying out proactive operations alongside our local partners to deal with any emerging issues or crime trends, including Anti-Social Behaviour.

Crime involving young people continues to be a problem for us and we are working hard to better protect them.

To a degree you can assist us by ensuring that you register property such as pedal cycles, tablets and mobile phones onto the Immobilise website and utilise tracking applications.

If you are unfortunate enough to have property stolen, the applications can assist us in locating the property and catching offenders.

To help prevent burglary and vehicle crimes, please ensure that you leave your vehicles locked, with valuables out of sight and homes locked and secure.

We are working hard to tackle these issues and would urge members of the public to take a look at the comprehensive crime prevention advice section on our website to help keep themselves and their belongings more secure.

This can be found at http://www.herts.police.uk/advice/crime_prevention/crime_prevention.aspx If you’d like to keep up to speed with what’s happening in your local area, I’d recommend that you sign up to our OWL (Online Watch Link) service if you haven’t already done so.