POLICE officer call-outs in Helensburgh and Lomond could fall by as much as 30 per cent under a new initiative, the area’s top cop has revealed.

Addressing a meeting of the area’s community planning group (CPG) on Thursday, February 6, Inspector Roddy MacNeill gave details of a new ‘contact assessment model’ to be implemented by the service.

While officers will continue to attend all urgent calls, non-urgent appointments will instead be put into a diary for police to come out and visit at a later time or date.

Inspector MacNeill said the new model is designed to reduce the time that officers spend on non-emergency call-outs, and to allow them to get to serious incidents more quickly.

READ MORE: Police plan to put more bobbies on the beat in Helensburgh

Inspector MacNeill told the CPG: “We are going through a bit of a change in how we allocate our resources, through a contact assessment model.

“Every call is being reviewed by a team, and we are not going to go to as many calls as we used to up until now.

“It used to be that we would go to everything. If somebody had fallen in their house, we would go and open the door for them, but now that is delegated to other services.

“We are also introducing diary calls. If somebody is not an urgent case, then chances are we will make a diary appointment, and these are taking place every day this week.

READ MORE: Police plea for information after 12 lambs are stolen from farm near Helensburgh

“We need to cut the number of calls we go to, and this will mean potentially 30 per cent of calls away from us that we just should not be at.

“Sometimes we are turning up to facilitate partner agencies. The supervisor will inform officers that they are happy for them not to go to a particular call, but we can over-rule them.

“It should free us up to be quicker to get to more urgent calls, and also give us more time to deal with anti-social behaviour issues which we are currently driving past.”

The inspector also told the meeting, at Arrochar’s Three Villages Hall, of officers’ efforts to catch and punish speeding motorists.

READ MORE: 'We're watching you' – police warning to speeding Helensburgh drivers

He said: “We are trying to serve speeding complaints as best we can – but it’s everywhere.

“Every single cop in Helensburgh has been trained with the laser gun, and I have requested the use of the camera van. It seems to like it at Dumbarton, as it is often there.

“However, the van is only deployed at places where there have been a high number of crashes. If you don’t have any crashes, the van isn’t coming.

“We are continuing to work on it as best we can, along with our traffic colleagues at Dumbarton.”

READ MORE: Catch up with all the latest Helensburgh and Lomond news headlines here