We held our Commendation Ceremony last Friday at the Tower of London which is a wonderful venue to thank members of public, police officers and staff for acts of bravery and dedication which go far beyond the call of duty.

As I listened to the citations I was reminded yet again how lucky I am to be able to call on such a motivated and professional body of officers and staff to fight crime and anti-social behaviour on the borough and also how lucky we all are to have such strong community support for what we do.

As you would expect, one of my major tasks at the moment is to prepare our policing operation for the Christmas and New Year party season.

While the vast majority of people will enjoy themselves safely, our job is to protect everyone from the small number of criminals who will seek to take advantage of the dark evenings.

Luckily, we have wonderful support from the local authority and housing associations in this task.

A major part of that work is also to protect people in their own home. We are having a real drive against burglary at the moment which always tends to increase at this time of year, while at the same time not letting up in any way on those individuals who haven’t yet understood that domestic abuse of any sort is completely unacceptable.

Please look at our website in early December to see latest crime prevention advice and how our ‘‘Winter Nights’’ campaign is going.