District Commander Update - Eastleigh & Hedge End

Good evening. I hope you're all well. There's an awful lot to bring you up to speed on from the last six months, not least the great work being undertaken by our teams and officers from departments across our district. Below is just some of the things they've been up to.

In October, we launched a new campaign – Operation Tranquility. The aim of this campaign is to tackle vehicle-related anti-social behaviour. It followed several reports on the Hedge End side of our district and it targets those intent on causing disruption within our communities.

In terms of continued anti-social behaviour, it is quite clear that vehicle nuisance, racing motorcycles and illegal use of e-bikes and scooters have caused much misery and concern to residents, other road users and pedestrians. We listened to these concerns, acted upon them and will continue to do so.

Op Tranquility involves officers from the local Neighbourhood Policing Team (NPT), working closely with our colleagues within the Roads Policing Unit (RPU), to jointly tackle this problem.

As 2026 progresses, you can expect to see ongoing proactive patrols to disrupt this illegal activity and an increase in speed enforcement activity whilst we continue to work with our partners to continue to identify long-term solutions.

We ask that our communities please continue to report incidents to us, as this directly informs our approach and where we will look to focus resourcing to tackle the issue and prevent further anti-social behaviour in our communities.

Op Sceptre took place in November. The week of action, focused on tackling and reducing knife crime, involved many of our teams and officers throughout the district.

The focus of their work involved carrying out home visits to habitual knife carriers, completing proactive patrols in identified hotspot areas and engaging with and further educating young people around the very real dangers of carrying knives.

Officers also held beat surgeries and visited local knife retailers to share important information and advice.

At the end of last June, we took part in the latest County Lines Intensification Week. If you’ve never heard of it before, County Lines is the term used to describe drug dealing where a phone number ‘line’, usually a mobile, is used to supply drugs from large cities into rural towns and areas.

Among lots of activity during the week of action (Monday 23 June to Sunday 29 June), we visited schools to complete vital education regarding County Lines and drugs. This work within the educational setting is crucial to helping us safeguard those who may be vulnerable to such criminality.

Many more bicycle coding sessions have taken place across our area. A security-marked bike is far less attractive to potential thieves.

However, if a bike is still subsequently stolen after being coded, we then have a much better chance of locating and reuniting it with its rightful owner. For more details on upcoming bike marking sessions, please stay tuned to our channels throughout 2026.

In July, we introduced you to new Eastleigh NPT Central sergeant, Dan Baines. Sergeant Baines has more than 12 years of policing experience, having previously worked in custody and on the District Policing Teams in Hedge End and Winchester.

Aside from all of the above, our Neighbourhood Policing Team officers have been linking in with and visiting schools to offer further education around many important topics, supporting partners to deal with and remove abandoned vehicles, seizing uninsured vehicles, including cars and e-scooters, and responding to and tackling reports of anti-social behaviour.

You can expect much more of all of this between now and the end of 2026, and beyond. As ever though, we need your information and reports, so please keep in touch with us and let us know what is happening where you live. We can act and tackle issues, but only if we’re aware of them.

In the meantime, we will continue to relentlessly target and prevent those committing crime in our district and will be sure to bring you the very latest on any arrests, charges and convictions at court, as we did throughout 2025.

We’ll also bring you news on warrants that have been executed and our efforts to tackle those using and supplying drugs, among other things.

Please look out for our officers on their travels, too. They’re out there in all weathers, as some of the photos we share on our pages hopefully demonstrate.

We’ll continue to advertise the dates of upcoming beat surgeries on our channels, so please look out for these. Our beat surgeries are an ideal opportunity for you to come and see us, ask questions and discuss any concerns. In the meantime, if you need to report anything to us, please call 101. In an emergency, please dial 999.

Since the launch of the Let’s Talk community survey at the end of 2024, the issue of speeding has continually been listed as a priority by many of you.

On the question of ‘What are the issues affecting you in your community which would benefit from joint working between police, partners and community members to resolve?’, more of you have answered ‘speeding’ than any other issue.

And, on the question of ‘What would you say is the top issue that is affecting you most here?’, more of you have again answered ‘speeding’ than any other issue.

Reflecting upon and responding to your concerns, the Safer Roads Unit continue to complete lots of enforcement and deterrent across our district, using both mobile and fixed cameras.

In November, there were nine visits to our area, which equated to 22 hours and 50 minutes of speed checks across the district. A total of 112 offences were recorded during those visits.

The aim of the enforcement we carry out is to help support you reduce the speed of traffic, making the roads safer for all road users, and reduce the risk of injury, collisions and casualties in our area.

We will continue to respond to your concerns and tackle the issues affecting you in your community, so please continue to let us know what is impacting you where you live.

We’ll bring you monthly updates on our work around speeding, so please stay tuned to our Facebook pages and Hampshire Alert for the latest.

Once again, if you have CCTV cameras at your business or home address, please register them with Hampshire & Isle of Wight Constabulary’s Community Portal to help us deter and solve crimes.

Register your cameras to help us fight crime | Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary

The service is free of charge and entirely voluntary. By registering with the Community Portal, you are not giving Hampshire & IOW Constabulary access to your CCTV system. You are purely making it easier for us to request and collect footage we may require for an investigation.

If you haven’t already completed a Let's Talk survey, please take a moment to do so.

https://survey.hampshirealert.co.uk/

Please also check out the Eastleigh Police Facebook page, Hedge End Police Facebook page and Hampshire Alert for more information on the local policing teams and what they’re doing.

Our page is a great way to follow all the teams and the work they are doing to tackle crime across our district in order to keep our communities safe.

You can also respond to our posts, ask questions and engage with teams. We will always do our best to reply to you on there, albeit this might not always be instant.

We’ll continue to bring you arrest and charge updates, court results, local community news, crime prevention advice and much more. Please continue to engage with us, both in person and online. We need to hear your views and experiences and will always do our best to respond to your comments.

As always, we thank you for your co-operation and understanding as we deal with a wide-variety of issues. If you see anything suspicious or witness a crime, please report this to us by calling 101. If it is an emergency, dial 999 immediately.

Eastleigh & Hedge End District Commander, Chief Inspector Rachel Noble

*As mentioned above, Let’s Talk is our community survey initiative that aims to understand the needs of our local communities and enables you to share any concerns with our officers.

It’s a really important tool which is already helping us to better understand the public’s concerns and subsequently work with partners to effectively address the issues raised.

Let’s Talk is a really important tool for us in the Eastleigh and Hedge End district and a great way for us to demonstrate, and for the communities to see, all the work we are doing. It’s being led by our Local Bobbies, who are on hand to listen to concerns, answer questions and offer advice. We have Local Bobbies across our area.

Please take the opportunity to sign up to Let’s Talk. We want to know what it’s like to live in your area, what the issues you face are and how can we work with others to make our communities safer and stronger.

If you see one of our Local Bobbies or PCSOs knocking at your door, please spare a few minutes to talk to them. Alternatively, you can have your say online via the aforementioned link.

Members of Hampshire Alert will then receive updates from their neighbourhood policing team about the action taken based on the feedback we receive.

You can also find all the contact details for your Local Bobbies here; https://www.hampshirealert.co.uk/Content/LocalLookup?_=