Features / Breakfast with Bristol24/7
Breakfast with Bristol24/7: Clare Moody
Clare Moody’s choice of the Key Cafe to meet for her Breakfast With Bristol24/7 interview was carefully planned. This cafe is staffed by former prisoners who are now determined to rebuild their lives; and a sense of purpose and belief filled the space as I waited for Avon & Somerset’s police and crime commissioner to arrive at the cafe on Gloucester Road just a stone’s throw from HMP Bristol.
While it was over a year ago that Moody was elected as the police and crime commissioner for Avon and Somerset Police, it was only in July this year she recommended the appointment of Kevin Slocombe as a deputy to her; an appointment that has shone a light on Bristol’s chumocracy.
As Moody tucked into her bacon and sausage bap, she explained why Slocombe – former Bristol mayor Marvin Rees’ chief of staff – was the perfect candidate for this part-time role. “A lot of what happens with the police and crime commissioning world is partner-working,” she told me. “Kevin’s background in local government is a really helpful background to making those relationships really operate.”
is needed now More than ever
A gleaming Moody expressed her desire to leave office at the end of her term with her “head held high” having successfully improved the lives of residents. A partnership with Slocombe, she believes, could contribute to this: “Kevin’s background is communications, and it’s really important to me that people get to hear and understand about what I’m doing, but also obviously about what their local police would do.”
Moody admits that she’s known Slocombe a “long time” with their acquaintance going back to their time in the trade union movement. Pleased with the partnership currently, she added: “So far, so good”.
In the Police & Crime Plan for 2024-2029, Moody explains her vision across policing and issues that she hopes to tackle during her term. One of her priorities in the plan is strengthening neighbourhood policing, especially through tackling antisocial behaviour.
While I cut into my sausage bap and sipped on a glass of water, I wondered if after a little over a year of being in the job, Moody thought there had been much change. “It takes time to set the strategic direction, so the actions don’t happen,” she said, adding that government funding has enabled the onboarding of 80 new and experienced officers into neighbourhood policing teams, which has in turn helped form “tactical teams”.
“When you have specific issues around an area, antisocial behaviour, for example, these officers will come in and do a kind of focused action around that, and then they work with the existing neighbourhood teams,” she added.
For most of 2025, there has been a constant flow of emails to the Bristol24/7 inbox about rampant drug usage and antisocial behaviour in public places in St Paul’s, an issue Bristol24/7 covered in May. Moody said that it is neighbourhood policing that can deal with this, emphasising the need for “police visibility”.
After taking a break from her bap and checking on her coffee order, Moody added: “If you’ve got that kind of open behaviour happening in those parks, in those areas where families are, then just having visible police community support officers (PCOs) helps. Having them walk through the areas at random times breaks up the pattern. It makes it a less appealing place to be for those involved in antisocial behaviour.” She also seemed hopeful about new PCSOs joining the team soon, taking off the work workload from neighbourhood policing teams.
When I met Moody, it was a few weeks before another anti-immigrant protest was planned in the city. In August 2024, a violent racist mob attempted to raid a hotel in Redcliffe housing refugees. They were only stopped because of the valiant efforts of the counter-protesters and policing teams. But what is the plan within Avon and Somerset Police to tackle such behaviour and help immigrants feel protected? “The impact of what happened in Bristol last August has rippled out in many ways. It felt big at the time, but in reality, it is such a small number of people,” Moody said.
She continued: “But they have had an outsized impact on people. I’ve had many conversations since, where people say for the first time, they felt unwelcome and concerned. The first thing I want to say is that these are small numbers of people. The vast number of people, this is not in their name. We are a better country than that.”
Moody grew up on the border of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire before moving to Portugal, where she was offered a job to work in a restaurant. She only returned to the UK to train to be a secretary, after which she began working in trade unions.
Moody admits having done many things in her adult life that as a young girl she never imagined she would. “It’s one of those where you sometimes have conversations in your own head about what you would say to your younger self,” she added.
After we finished our food and I was about to say goodbye, I could see her itching to get on to her laptop to get cracking on with her next task. Those tasks are to fulfil the role of a PCC as “the voice of local people in policing and to hold the chief constable to account”. It’s an important role but one which is virtually invisible to the vast majority of people. Perhaps her new deputy can change that perception.
Illustration of Clare Moody by Lucy J Turner
This article first appeared in the Bristol24/7 September/October 2025 magazine
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