NEW Community Inspector Ian Stephen wants to take the opinions of the public on board as he bids to get his teams throughout the Cowdenbeath-Lochgelly area to make it a better place to live and work in.

The former staff officer to the Commander at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, took over at Cowdenbeath Police Station on January 11 and he has been busily looking to get out and about and meet all the voluntary organisations in the three council wards covered from the Brunton House station.

Inspector Stephen, born in Perth, joined Northumbria Police in 1992 and worked in Newcastle and Sunderland before joining Lothians and Borders in 2002 when he was on patrol in such tough districts as Drylaw, Craigmillar and Leith.

In 2012 he joined the team which was to put together the mechanism to amalgamate all the individual forces into Police Scotland before working on the policing of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

Then in November 2014 he decided to start moves to get into the Fife part of Police Scotland and for he took he took the role of Response Inspector based in Dunfermline.

He told the Times: “For me the word community says it all, I see our role being to work with the people in the Cowdenbeath area to find out what they see as the main problems they want to see tackled.

“That means the people in the street, the business communities, the voluntary organisations and the local councillors.

“We want our community teams in Cowdenbeath, Lochgelly and Cardenden and the Lochs wards to strengthen their engagement with the public and work with them to tackle the problems that people see as priorities.”

He added: “I have already met the members of the Central Fife Community Safety and Crime Prevention Panel and their knowledge and enthusiasm impressed me.

“I know that there are many more voluntary groups doing a lot of good things in Crossgates, Kelty, Cowdenbeath, Lumphinnans, Lochgelly, Benarty and the Cardenden areas and I want to meet them all over the coming weeks.

“We want to build on the successes of the community police teams and encourage the public to work with us to make the area a better place to live in.”

And he stressed that he is talking about people of all ages: “The young people of the area are very important elements of the community and we want to engage with them to find out what they feel are necessary priorities.”

He will be making moves to speak to the business communities of the district to get their take on the things that they feel are needing tackled.

Inspector Stephen concluded: “I am really excited to be involved in the Cowdenbeath area at a time when things seem to be moving forward positively and I am hopeful that our community police teams can play their part in building public confidence.”