Is Phil Twiss’ campaign in such serious trouble that Alison Hernandez has to politicise her Police Commissioner role so blatantly to provide him with her selfie skills?

Phil is the outgoing County Cabinet Member for finance and the Tories will be desperate not to lose him on May Day.

But can Alison really afford to spend the time from her failing “day job”?

When Alison canvassed three years ago in the by-election called after the sad death of Val Ranger in Newton Poppleford, her presence was also called into question. Then she would seem to have been a liability as the Tory candidate tanked garnering only a paltry 113 votes.

Her success rating must surely have sunk even further since then.

There is the not insignificant issue of us having to pay for three Chief Constables just to have one in post.

The force has been subject to a series of adverse reports from the Police Inspectorate and even placed into “special measures” in 2022.

A couple of weeks ago her own office published a follow-up report, which covers the year to March 2024, identifying several ways in which the Devon and Cornwall Police force has failed to meet statutory requirements.

These include “failing to consistently notify” the police and crime commissioner’s office of complaints that require more than twelve months to resolve, and a “complete failure” to notify it of the outcomes of more serious allegations made to the Independent Office for Police Conduct.

The report also identifies a “number of wider, systemic concerns about the timeliness and quality of the force’s complaint handling, starting from the initial handling of complaints on first receipt, ongoing quality of contact with the complainant, timeliness and quality assurance of complaint investigations, and consistency and quality of outcomes”.

A couple of weeks ago she hit the air waves blaming the quality of police staff to explain the adverse report.

But Owl can reveal that this is is not the full story.

“The report also shows that her office, which handles appeals against the outcome of complaints and the way complaints were handled, itself completed only 108 such appeals during 2023-24, a third fewer than in 2022-23, and took significantly longer to do so than before.” (Source)

Perhaps things would improve if she stopped wasting her energies on these partisan, selfie, expeditions.

As you are out and about in the market towns of Devon in this election period ask yourself this question: who are you most likely to see a police officer or the Independent Police Commissioner?