THE increasing return of bobbies to the beat is a move welcomed by all but villains -- as they deter crime and their visible presence makes the streets feel safer.

And hats off to new police 'surgeries' scheme being tried next month in yob-plagued parts of Blackburn -- a town to which beat patrols were restored in January after a six-year absence. Now residents of Mill Hill, Feniscowles and the Galligreaves estate are to be given the opportunity of 20-minute appointments with beat officers to voice their concerns.

It will, I am sure, do nothing but good for the improvement of police intelligence, for boosting communities' trust in the force and ending the estrangement with residents that car-borne patrols caused.

But we are told that this is a bid to prevent the problems residents report to the police by phone being lost in the call-centre system.

Yet, how might that happen? Sergeant Paul Goodall, in charge of Blackburn's eight community beat managers, explains: "At the moment, people ring up the call centre and say, for instance, they are having a problem with teenagers hanging around their street corner...The control staff may not be able to send someone at that time and will advise them to contact their community beat manager."

Put another way, this sounds to me like residents having the buck passed back to them and being told to go out and find a bobby themselves.

Sergeant Goodall is concerned that some might not bother -- hence the surgeries scheme.

One has to accept that police resources are limited and that officers cannot be everywhere at once. Even so, when members of the public make a complaint to the police, as well as it being listened to, should it not also be responded to -- even if not at once -- rather than it being batted back to them and, as a result, running the risk of never being acted on at all? When that happens, it's one-nil to the yobs, isn't it.

At least, residents of Mill Hill, Feniscowles and Galligreaves will from next month have the luxury of the surgeries. But how long will folk elsewhere have to put up with being told the police are too busy to help them?