FLINTSHIRE North's new police inspector has spoken of his priorities for addressing crime.

Inspector Stephen Roberts took up the post at the beginning of December from Inspector Gareth Cust.

He has worked in many areas of the North Wales Police, including previously as force incident manager, tactical firearms commander and temporary chief inspector for Wrexham.

On his plans for Flintshire North, Insp Roberts said he will be focusing on community engagement and crime prevention, as well as partnership working to understand and address the causes of offending.

He explained: "A huge aspect to this is the partnership approach and by that I mean working together as often as possible as a combined team with the local authority and other partners such as voluntary organisations.

"Whoever is best to help us deal with the issues, that's the way we will do it.

"I've changed the setup of the neighbourhood policing teams.

"We have seven sub-districts which have historically had PCSOs aligned to them; they now have a police officer from the neighbourhood policing team aligned to them as well.

"They manage the risk, priorities and demand for their sub-area.

"The intention is that the neighbourhood policing team becomes firmly embedded with all of the partner agencies."

Insp Roberts also explained a scheme he has used in other areas which he plans to use for Flintshire North, in order to get to know what the community's priorities and concerns are.

"Once every three months," he said, "the whole neighbourhood team and special constables and partner agencies go to a specific area - for example it might be Garden City.

"We spend all day there asking the public three questions; Do you live here? What road do you live on? And what are your top three gripes - police related or not.

"At the end of the day we come back, list those gripes and come up with a top three.

"We then spend the next three months working on those with partner agencies.

"I'm keen to work with the community and partners to see how we can help - if we have a combined effort we can make a massive change for people."