THE new Liberal Democrat Police & Crime Commissioner candidate says he will seek creative solutions to policing concerns in Wiltshire and Swindon.

After the aborted May PCC elections, second place Lib Dem hopeful, Liz Webster, stepped down from running for the role again.

Her successor, Cllr Brian Mathew previously ran against the former PCC Angus Macpherson in 2016, said this election is Wiltshire and Swindon’s last shot at a proportional representation style vote for the job. After these elections, he said, the system will move from a preferred candidate to a first-past-the-post style ballot.

He said that this is an election which should not be happening and that if the Conservatives do not pay for the £1.5m election re-run, then they would pay at the polling stations.

Looking forward to the August election, Mr Mathew outlined his key priorities should he be elected.

The first among these is speeding and preventing more lives being lost on Wiltshire roads. He would like to see the implementation of intelligent speed cameras, which he said was pushed back by the previous PCC with criticisms over the cameras gathering too much data.

Mr Mathew said: “They do generate information but you can tailor that to what you want to collect.

“You’re able to find out where people speed, when they speed and people repeat their behaviours. The police can then put their official speed camera in the right place at the right time and take these people off the road.”

On the topic of county lines gangs, Mr Mathew said that after speaking with pupils and parents that he wanted to look into training retired officers to regularly reach out to schools.

“There is a programme where police do visit the schools, but its very scaled back on what it used to be,” he said.

“I’ve raised these issues with the police federation chairman, Mark Andrews, and he thought they were interesting.

“You need to set up a dialogue so that kids can tell their side of the story or if they have real personal problems they know who they can go and talk to.”

Wiltshire is one of the least funded police forces in the country and this, Mr Mathew said, means that whoever is in the role needs to be able to think laterally.

As an overseas aide specialist, Mr Mathew said he was used to dealing with difficult problems and would bring that expertise to the top role.

A real concern over visible policing in the county has been raised throughout the elections, and Mr Mathew said he would want to set up “pop-up cop shops” in vacant town centre shops so locals can get to know their local bobby.

This lateral thinking extends to the potential closure and sale of police buildings throughout the county, including those in Devizes and Salisbury. Salisbury, the county’s only city, being a particular issues as those arrest must be carted to Melksham for holding.

Mr Mathew says he would look to share resources with the military, who also have holding cells to make use of every available avenue and resource.