A MONTH-LONG roadshowaiming to find out how Gwent residents want to contact police gets under way next week.

Gwent Police and Gwent Police Authority are launching an online questionnaire to find out how and where people feel most comfortable reporting issues to the police, and the mobile police station will be visiting 17 towns over the next month handing out leaflets and answering questions. The roadshow stems fromGwent Chief Constable Carmel Napier’s announcement last month that 17 police stations will close their front desks to help the force save £34million by 2015.

Assistant Chief Constable Simon Prince said: “We want to introduce many more ways for people to contact the police, both to report crime and get feedback on investigations, and to engage generally with our neighbourhood policing teams.

Through detailed research we know a relatively small proportion of people visit our police stations, because they prefer to contact us by telephone or via the web. That’s why we’re planning to reduce front counter services at 17 of our 22 main stations, but enhance our telephone and online services.” The first roadshow takes place place at Tesco in Pontypool from 10am until 4pm on Tuesday and the online survey will go live on the same day. For a full list of where the roadshow will be visiting, seewww.gwent.police.uk