The Surrey Ad is carrying a story highlighting the fact that residents along Horsell Moor have been hit by a series of burglaries and thefts from vehicles. I met Josh Parish, the Horsell beat officer, at the May Fayre and his team is doing a great job to target offenders and get results in the courts.

But he can’t win them all and occasionally the law is stacked in the favour of the criminals. We had a similar thing in Grange Road last year and these people tend to work a patch, looking for soft targets like open windows and unlocked cars. Don’t let yourself become a victim – make it not worth their while by taking all the simple security measures.

You’ll not only thank youself but Josh will thank you too because it’s his job to keep the crime figures down and one spate of thefts can damage months of hard work.

On Monday evening, I hosted Horsell Village Horsell Trustees and this clashed with both the Conservative group meeting and the Christmas panel meeting for Horsell of Surrey Police. I did however pop along to the first 25 minutes of the latter before dashing back home for HVH because I think it is important to know what the policing issues are.

The panel consists of PC Josh Parish, our excellent neighbourhood officer, PSCO Kimberley Muir who I don’t know that well but I have seen out patrolling in the village quite a lot and Kate Wilson, Woking Borough Council’s neighbourhood officer. Josh spoke a bit about problems of parking near the C of E school around rush hour and about how he and Kimberley had been moving inconsiderately parking vehicles on – to mixed reaction. Plans are afoot to strengthen this measure.

He also mentioned the anti-burglary operation that Surrey Police has been carrying out, the reason that he knocked on my door a few weeks ago. Questions from the floor were almost exclusively about speeding, whether it be along Chobham Road, Brewery Road or down side streets. It certainly seems to be a problem and on Brewery Road I know of at least one recent incident where damage was caused by an accident.

The Speedwatch programme is an excellent scheme but not to everyone’s taste. I guess it depends on your views on speeding – my view is that communities have to take responsibility and that training them up to issue warnings to speeding drivers is a natural application of this principle. Drivers don’t have the right to speed just because they think that they can handle it – while it is annoying to be picked up for doing just over the speed limit, unfortunately for many dangerous drivers speed is a key identifier.

I would train up for the scheme but cannot see how I would have the time to participate at the moment. We need less speeding in Horsell because of the busy and crammed nature of our village. There are too many people around, a lot of them children, to take risks. Horsell can easily be bypassed for those trying to get elsewhere in a hurry – there is no excuse for them to coming racing through the village.

We're lucky to have PC Josh Parish in Horsell

No, not like that - sorry to disappoint. PC Josh Parish knocked on my door about half an hour ago while I was emptying the dishwasher (good job I didn’t have the meat cleaver in my hand when I opened the door) and just wanted to pass across details of the Safer Neighbourhood Policing Team in Horsell, which is basically him and PCSO Kimberley Muir.

I’d be stretching it a bit if I said that I regularly see Josh patrolling these parts but then I’m not here all the time and I know from my experience elsewhere that Surrey Police faces a struggle against budgetary constraints to provide the presence they’d ideally like. Josh and Kimberley can’t be everywhere all the time and they do a very good job for the village – attending HRA meetings when they can, working with councillors and making an effort to communicate with residents to get to the heart of problems before they get out of control.

Around Grange Road, I have to say that we have almost no trouble at all but I’m told that there have been a couple of burglaries in the area of late, which given the time of year and the nature of the area is not hugely surprising. It’s good advice to residents across Horsell as the nights draw in – make sure your windows are closed and preferrably locked, that gates are secured and valuable goods not left in sight. Use your alarm if you have one and if you don’t have one think about it -  we paid £600 for ours a year ago and while it’s not a small sum, you’ll gladly pay it to get your sentimental items back if you fall victim to these people.

Burglars are often real professionals and they can sweep through a house, pick out the valuable, re-sellable items and get out again in under 10 minutes before your neighbours are even aware they have arrived. The vast majority are highly opportunistic and attracted by open windows, doors, loosely secured entry points and obvious means of easy escape. Don’t get scared; get secured and do everything you can to make your house a risky proposition for them.

I’m grateful to Josh for dropping round to point out an open window on our out-house – while there’s nothing of value in there anyway because it’s unsecure even with the window closed, I’ll be closing it tomorrow so it doesn’t give any unwelcome observers an invitation to visit that they don’t deserve.