I am delighted that the latest crime statistics show that crime is continuing to fall, but sorry that I have been proved right in my warnings last year that neighbourhood policing would be under threat from police cuts.

A report by Her Majesty’s Inspector of Policing into how police forces were coping with making cuts highlights the risk to neighbourhood policing. Teams are getting a ‘broader remit’ – this means covering larger areas, doing the jobs of others such as response and investigation and downgrading the visibility and assurance that neighbourhood teams provided.

Delivering neighbourhood policing teams across England and Wales was a major success of police reform for our government. And it is a reform, not just a result of spending more on policing. It changed the way that police operated in communities; it enabled new partnerships, especially with local government and housing associations; and it built the confidence and trust of local people to work alongside the police reporting crime and acting as witnesses. It isn’t just a ‘nice to have’. It is crucial to the relationship between police and public, to solving and preventing crime, and to maintaining the British model of ‘policing by consent’.

Good neighbourhood officers are problem-solvers, not just crime-solvers. They know where the trouble spots are; they know who the troublemakers are. They don’t only work with community groups, they help to create them. They don’t only respond to complaints and issues, they go looking for them in surgeries, walking the streets and building a relationship with local people. It is proactive not reactive. It helps to prevent crime rather than simply dealing with it once it’s been committed and more victims have been created.

Irene Curtis, president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, sums up its significance when she says: ‘Neighbourhood policing and community engagement should be at the heart of the way we deliver policing – it is critical for our legitimacy’.

It will be an enormously retrograde step if we go back to seeing police only when they’re racing, blue lights flashing, to respond to another crime. They will have sacrificed one of the most important tools in preventing and solving crime – the confidence and active involvement of the communities they are trying to protect. I’m amazed that the government is not arguing for neighbourhood policing and disappointed that police and crime commissioners are not making it more of a priority. We must defend it now and plan how to rebuild it when we get back into government.

There may well be a lag in crime statistics and, while we can welcome lower crime today, removing policing from our neighbourhoods risks higher crime tomorrow.

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Jacqui Smith is former home secretary, writes the Monday Politics column for Progress, and tweets @smithjj62

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Photo: Meg Moggington