Rural Crime

Supporting rural communities affected by rural crime, including but not limited to; residential burglary, machinery theft, animal or livestock worrying, illegal poaching and criminal damage.

Working with both partners and the Sussex Rural Crime Team to serve our rural communities, supporting initiatives such as country watch or rural watch to make rural communities feel safer by building long-lasting partnerships, responding to the community’s needs and providing an effective policing service.

Policing our more rural areas to prevent and disrupt rural crime, and to identify those who use our more isolated areas of the district to conduct criminal activities, from fly tipping, damage to property and livestock worrying, to agricultural and equine theft.

Officers continue to commit to rural patrols of our villages across the Lewes district, with a number of additional hours spent across your areas over the summer months, teams also continue to hold regular meetings for residents in which they can report and obtain first-hand updates on reported crimes.

Funded by the PCC for Sussex, a number of Selecta DNA marking kits have also been distributed across rural farms, and communities to help offer further protection to farming equipment, machinery and tools as part of our continued commitment to helping safeguard our more rural locations from crime.

As well as patrols, and community meetings, officers for Lewes have also attended a number of community events over the summer holidays, including fetes, fayres and family days to offer both crime prevention advice and support, as well as to meet local residents and community members for updates and in-person reporting of local issues.

Operation Downsway

Our yearly campaign to address community concerns around road and driving related offences that fall into the fatal 5 driving offences.

Including targeted patrols, education and enforcement activities across the district throughout the Summer months, focused on targeting excess speed, distracted driving, as well as drink/drug driving.

Continued work with partners, local authorities, including volunteer Community Speed Watch Groups to support activities and keep the roads of your towns and villages safe for all road users.

Throughout the summer months a number of dedicated patrols targeting driving related offences in our rural villages have taken place.

With officers deployed either on their own or joint deployments with volunteers from Community SpeedWatch Groups (CSW) to conduct vehicle speed checks in areas reported by local residents as having seen an increase in excess speeding or ASB driving.

These deployments have led to a number of a referrals to our Sussex Police Road Safety Team for either educational or enforcement notification, or for in person visits to registered keep addresses.

These checks will continue as our campaign Operation Downsway remains in place throughout the Autumn months, before we launch our Winter crack down on drink/drug driving, which too will see an increase in road side checks and road patrols across the Lewes districts.