HOW right the Bucks Free Press is to highlight the crisis in law and order in South Bucks now that a major survey commissioned by Channel Four TV has slammed police performance in our district as the worst in the country.

No blame, of course, attaches to individual police officers out there fighting crime on our behalf, or to area commanders who are hardpressed and starved of resources.

But we must ask ourselves just who is responsible for this situation.

The Labour Government must carry its share of the blame for under-investing in policing for four years.

Police numbers nationally are down, crime levels particularly of theft and car crime are rising steadily, and the police morale is dented by the politically correct agenda of Labour and Lib Dem politicians and the flawed Macpherson Report that brands even the best of our police officers "institutionally racist".

No wonder that police morale has plummeted and the Thames Valley Police are struggling to recruit, retain and motivate the officers we so desperately need.

But that is not the whole story.

The second slice of blame must rest with the police authority and the Chief Constable whose approach to policing in the Thames Valley sees police resources diverted from our rural villages to the town centres of Slough and High Wycombe. The time has come to address these problems.

We need more resources, more manpower, more police in our local communities. We need to challenge the policing strategy that sacrifices the interests of our rural communities and establish instead a new police area covering South Bucks and Chiltern which excludes High Wycombe and Slough.

The people of South Bucks have paid their taxes, so where are our police?

The time has come for action.

The Conservatives on South Bucks District Council are working closely with their MP, Dominic Grieve, who is raising these matters directly in Parliament. The message for the Home Secretary, the chairman of the police authority, and the Chief Constable is clear: platitudes are no substitute for police on our streets.

Cllr Trevor Egleton (Con, Stoke Poges), Leader, South Bucks District Council

Cllr Chris Whitehouse (Con, Iver Heath), Vice chairman, policy committee, South Bucks District Council