BOOSTING volunteering, streamlining substance abuse services, and championing restorative justice are among the ideas Conservative candidate Angus Macpherson hopes to put into action if elected Wiltshire’s first police and crime commissioner.

Mr Macpherson, an accountant, of Wroughton , will go up against Labour’s Clare Moody to secure the powerful police job at the county-wide election on November 15.

The directly-elected police and crime commissioner will replace the police authority and will have the power to hire and fire the chief constable, and set the force’s budget and strategy.

A new joint police and crime panel, which reflects the overall political make-up of Swindon and Wiltshire Councils, will hold the official to account. Mr Macpherson, a former councillor who has already started leafleting homes, said he wanted to make better use of volunteers, including boosting the number of special constables from less than 200 active members to nearer 350 over a number of years.

He said: “We don’t have the number of special constables in Wiltshire and I think there’s potential. It would be a recruitment drive, and making their role sort of worthwhile and exciting for them to feel they want to do it.

“I went to the Wanborough Show and there were lots of regular police people there. Wanborough Show is exactly the sort of thing the special constabulary can police.

“It’s not going to be a hotbed of crime at the Wanborough Show but we need people to direct the traffic and be there if things go wrong.”

Mr Macpherson, a chairman of two local charities helping the homeless, said another of his ideas was to commission Wiltshire’s drug and alcohol services together, rather than in isolation, to provide better value for money and tackle substance abuse more holistically.

He said: “For instance, you’ve got drug and alcohol services that are paid for getting people off drugs but if they’re using alcohol to excess that doesn’t matter. It’s about joining things up.

“There are 23 pages of information on drugs services in Wiltshire in a document published by Wiltshire Council. That seems an awful lot of people running around doing similar things so we need to join some of these things up.”

Mr Macpherson, who has been a magistrate in Swindon for 20 years, said he also wanted to increase the use of restorative justice, which can range from a jailed offender agreeing to meet their victim face-to-face, to an offender physically repairing the damage they caused in return for no prosecution.

He said several agencies already ran restorative justice schemes but his idea was to have a clear route of going down this route, meaning more offenders and victims would agree to use it rather than going through the courts.

Mr Macpherson said Government funding cuts would be an issue, but he would seek to make savings internally first, possibly by combining back-office functions with other forces, rather than outsourcing services to save.

The Adver hopes to speak to Labour’s candidate Claire Moody about her ideas, but she has not yet responded. She is a senior official for the union Unite which, among other people, represents police staff.

Ms Moody has worked closely with police staff on the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act, which brought in the commissioners.

The Lib Dems have yet to announce a candidate.