Tim Passmore, Suffolk's Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), says communication failures are behind declining trust in the force.

Mr Passmore met police chiefs during Friday's accountability and performance panel meeting to discuss a report on the force's confidence and satisfaction levels.

The report revealed a decline in confidence across all metrics, with the biggest change being in whether residents felt officers treated them fairly, a decrease from 65.5 per cent to 59.5 per cent.

Despite this, however, satisfaction levels have broadly increased, with the only significant negative outlier being how the force deals with rural crime.

Mr Passmore said the lack of satisfaction had communication failures at its core and hoped the new Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) established in September would help to curb this trend.

He said: "Communication is really crucial with all this. Most people are forgiving but what they don't like is being left hanging without knowing what's going on. Trust and confidence are absolutely fundamental in policing, we're all in this together."

On top of this, he said, the force's standing as the fourth lowest funded in the country, the increase in demand, with over 34,000 extra 999 calls in comparison to 2021, and controversies in larger forces, all contributed to a decline in confidence.

He added: "Some of the people who have been surveyed haven't had any interaction with the police so it must be about what they have read about elsewhere. But I do think the force does really well with the resources it has."

Also revealed in the report, however, was a hike in internal conduct cases from 20 reported last year to 36, an 80 per cent increase.

Although a detailed breakdown of these cases was not provided, the panel heard a significant proportion had to do with sexual misconduct cases, 65 per cent of which were allegedly perpetrated by male officers.

Mr Passmore, who has made violence against women and girls one of his core messages, said the hike was due to encouraging victims to report incidents of sexual misconduct.He added: "These allegations are pursued and there isn't any dilitary approach to this — obviously nobody is guilty until they are proven so but, regardless of rank, it is pursued.

"It's very disappointing, you shouldn't have any cases like that but they will be dealt with appropriately. We take complaints extremely seriously."