Devon’s top police officer says the county’s “beautiful expanse of land” presents the force with its biggest challenge.

Interim chief constable James Vaughan attended the Devon County Show on Friday alongside police and crime commissioner Alison Hernandez.

“We are the thin blue line that is made that much thinner by the huge, beautiful expanse of land and that make policing a challenge,” he said.

“It makes it a challenge to get to emergencies, to get across the moors, and to get to the beautiful villages and coastal towns that we enjoy living in.”

He said, however, that the force is “well-resourced and well-prepared” and making “great strides” in improving performance across the county.

Asked whether it was a good use of police time for the force’s top officer to be at the show, Mr Vaughan said it is a “great opportunity” to meet the public and celebrate farming.

“We love days like today where we can meet the public, as they pay the rent, so to speak. They are our taxpayers so it is really good to come and meet them and hear from them about the problems they might have, which is why the commissioner and I are here, so it is a good use of our time.”

Ms Hernandez added it was important to show that Devon and Cornwall police are a strong team and to “celebrate how fantastic Devon policing is”.

“We’ve got some fantastic officers here today, everybody loves the police dogs, and the whole point is to inspire people in Devon, who are coming [to the show] with their families to want to get involved in policing and consider being a police officer,” she said.

“That’s one of the opportunities we get by coming here.”

In terms of finances, Mr Vaughan said the force had a balanced budget over five years, and Ms Hernandez added that she had helped focus cash towards “tangible investments”, including opening 13 police station front desks.

“That’s really important because people want to know that policing is on their side and in their communities,” she said.

“This last year, we have probably had the most visibility that the police have ever been able to achieve through hotspot policing, which we got extra money from the government for.

“And we did huge amounts of overtime in visible policing in our communities and we have had really positive feedback about that and we’ll be doing the same again this year with money from this government too.”

She added that the force had secured funding for neighbourhood policing to pay for to get police community support officers “back out onto our streets”.

Asked about firearms, given many of the rural community attending the Devon County Show might want or need to own them, Ms Hernandez said the large majority of people with firearms use them “very safely and we don’t have a worry about them at all”.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct made a series of recommendations to “help improve firearms licensing arrangements” at a force and national level in the wake of the incident involving Jake Davison in the Keyham area of Plymouth in 2021.

Davison used a legally held shotgun to kill his mother and four other people before shooting himself.

“There is a process that they have to go through to get authorised and to have a licence to hold a gun but it is largely safe,” she said.

“We have had our issues in the past, and that is still lingering, and one of the issues after that was a very risk-averse licensing department which was turning down applications from lots of people who needed guns for their work.

“But we have managed to improve backlogs that were there, and I have invested money into the force to help the chief constable do that and we have had really positive feedback today from those associations that support those in the rural community, saying that it is working.”