THERE are lots of people who believe that Britain has the finest police force in the world. This includes, if you listen to them, a lot of senior policemen. Sorry. According to the Global Police Index which provides an annual ranking based on 23 criteria we come 35th. The safest country is now officially New Zealand, with the Scandanavian countries and Austria following. The USA, which has two million people behind bars, comes 83rd.

The Gloucestershire police do try hard to impress. They might not always be where you want or need them but invite them to your parish council, committee, WI, school, and they have someone there handing our glossy brochures with lots of police statistics to "prove" that they are winning the battle against crime. Trouble is that this is hard to assess as they have a tendency to alter the ways of calculating their figures. I know someone who was a key figure in the emergency services who assures me that there are four senior officers in Gloucestershire whose main duties are public relations, or salesmen if you prefer.

This is not in any way a criticism of the police as human beings doing a very difficult job. These days police training is lengthy and rigorous covering everything from the finer points of the law to dealing with a dead body. Specialist sections of the course like driving a police car are internationally renowned. As policing can only be partially taught in the classroom, recruits are given a lot of practical training on the beat with mentors.

So why are we only rated 35th? We are, unfortunately, in the Forest of Dean, in the Third World, like much of the rest of the UK. If you need help you dal 999 and are put through to the control centre in Cheltenham and are asked to give the details to the police operator. He or she has then the difficult task of giving your problem a priority rating. The call can be anything from a man waving a gun about in Sedbury to a couple of naughty children letting off fireworks in Newent. At night the trouble is that the local stations are all closed and you have only one patrol car in the Forest area. On top of that there is the volume of calls for help. They have not yet logged a thousand calls in 24 hours but I know on occasion they have come close to that.

So you scramble a car and the gun man is arrested. What do you do with your prisoner? You can't tie him to a tree. So you and your colleague have to drive him to Gloucester or Cheltenham, where they might have a vacant cell, you have to process him or her, and then perhaps the controller gets another urgent call about an incident in Staunton where a drunk is throwing bricks at the church windows. You could ask Monmouth police to help but every local force hates to admit that they can't cope on their own.

How should it be? A few years ago I went with my host to visit some show caves in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. Afterwards we had a meal and started to drive in the dark the long road back to Sydney. After about 30 miles I checked my pockets and discovered that my wallet was missing. It contained air tickets, bank cards, driving licence, money, etc. New South Wales is as big as England and the outback is thinly populated. We came to a tiny settlement and found a small police post which while closed had one illuminated sign and a phone which directed us to another small town a dozen miles away. The police station there was well lit, open all night, and the duty officer greeted us like old friends. The place was homely, interview room with sofa, even a child's play area. The policeman put the coffee on, efficiently took all the details, sent these through to the station near the caves which he requested should be searched the next morning. He chatted to us about his life and ambitions. A couple of days later I received a call. The wallet had been found in the restaurant we had used and the police returned it to us with all the contents intact.

Imagine the service an Aussie could expect in a similar situation after a day in the Forest of Dean. It can be worse. On the district council I recall a colleague describing how she had taken a terrified woman into a local police station which was still open and leaving her with the officer on duty. He had to send her home where she was viciously attacked by a man with a poker. It was not the copper's fault. He had no facilities or infrastructure available to look after her.

There is a review of policing going on in the county. There are two alternatives. The first is old fashioned community policing in which coppers are permanently attached to a defined area, get to know them and the local people, walk round them, remain observant and inquisitive and generally helpful. Bream once had three policemen based in the village. In the past this was expected, and worked. It could be that some officers did get too comfortable, did not keep up to date, or seek more training. At the same time if there had been more walking round Cinderford would the criminals running a major cannabis production unit under the noses of the CID have got away with it as long as they did?

The second is to take a reactive role relying on electronic surveillance to gather "intelligence" and pounce when the controller has an urgent call from the public. This is reactive but the problem is that it depends on remote control. Community policing means that the baddies know that a man in uniform with a radio under his chin has his eye on them and this acts as a deterrent. This cannot be factored into crime statistics or be shown as targets achieved but is what the public prefer.

Basically the police do not have enough money allocated to them to do their job properly. People in Gloucestershire are particularly badly off because we have to pay for protecting the Royals who live in the county additionally.

Naturally the royal family, which costs about £600 million a year to protect, is being allowed another 150 armed officers at a time when county forces are having to cut their numbers.

Tony Blair did try to persuade county forces to amalgamate. It is potty tohave 43 different police forces. A neighbour of mine had the tools of his trade stolen from his van. He had the number of a suspect car, and this was traced to Wales where the owner was known to the police. But by the time the inter-force procedures had been gone through it was a waste of time obtaining a search warrant. Replacing his tools cost the victim the holiday he had booked.

The chief constables fought hard to protect their empires and frightened their county council

lors by arguing amal­­­gamation would cost more council tax. This is true. Take East and West Sussex. Each county has about 900 officers. Join them together and thinking regionally and they might decide that their main problem was Brighton and that this needed more officers. At the moment they have to take four-week trained auxillaries called community support officers with no more powers of arrest than you or I under common law. Blair backed off. The police simply need more money to raise us above third world status and 35th in the league table.

On one thing they do score and that is integrity. I recalled back in the 1970s I heard on the 7am BBC news that after a lorry had come to grief on the M5 the driver revealed his load of tinned food and told the police to help themselves as it was an "insurance job." Patrol cars arrived from all over. This story was suppressed. The solicitor acting for the Police Federation later told me that in legal circles it was known as the "peas and beans" case. Fifty police shortly afterwards were posted. In most countries police corruption is rampant.

In England now I cannot imagine any of the front line police I have met behaving like many of the forces abroad or as happened in our past. Early in the last century it was rare in London to find a policeman on duty who was sober.

But a better national system with more funding is needed to bring us out of the third world status. At present the police are hanging onto control by their fingernails, certainly in the Forest of Dean.

Government is devouring our civil liberties like a greedy monster; at the same time it is not providing us with the organisation and above all policing to keep us as secure as most developed countries. – Roger Horsfield, Bream.