Former Conservative Police & Crime Commissioner Mark Shelford has responded to recent accusations made in parliament by Taunton & Wellington MP Gideon Amos regarding anti-social behaviour in Taunton.
Mr Shelford remarked, “While I share his enthusiasm for tackling this important issue, his speech contained a curious blend of historical revisionism and numerical creativity that demands clarification—lest readers think Taunton has pioneered time travel and alternative arithmetic!”
He added, “Mr. Amos asserted that I “closed” Taunton Police Station in 2018. A remarkable accusation, given that I was not elected to office until 2021. Unless my predecessor secretly gifted me a TARDIS, I fear the MP’s timeline is more fiction than fact. Moreover, the police station did not close—it relocated to Deane House, a move widely reported at the time. To attribute this transition to my (then-nonexistent) tenure suggests either a whimsical disregard for dates or a staff briefing gone awry. I trust it’s the latter, as diligence in fact-checking is surely the bedrock of parliamentary debate.”
“Equally puzzling are claims that I “cut” 80 Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs). Let me be unequivocal: no PCSOs were cut under my administration. In fact, numbers were maintained, though recruitment insome areas was paused as part of prudent financial housekeeping—a decision made transparently to protect frontline services during budgetary pressures. To conflate fiscal responsibility with cuts is to mistake prudence for profligacy.”
“While I applaud Mr. Amos’s newfound interest in Taunton’s governance, I gently remind him that accuracy matters. Residents deserve debates rooted in reality, not recycled errors. I request he publicly corrects his error and should he ever wish to verify local history—or basic Maths—my door (and the archives at Deane House) remain open.”
