Pressure on the Penarth area's police resources is more intense than at any time in the career of the town's Local Police Inspector, Andrew Rice.

Inspector Rice, who is responsible for policing across the whole of the Vale of Glamorgan, said that the pressure "is more than it has ever been in my career.''

He said that police officers based in Penarth are called upon to deal with situations in the Vale and Cardiff.

Addressing Penarth Town Council yesterday, Inspector Price said that ''Penarth doesn't sit in isolation of policing as a whole.'' Penarth, he said, produces approximately 1% of demand on South Wales Police on the whole. ''Things that happen elsewhere have an impact locally''.

For example, during the recent Extinction Rebellion environmental protests in Cardiff, Penarth-based police units were deployed to the city centre.

Inspector Rice said, ''it is likely to be an extremely busy summer' at a time when South Wales Police are short of 3,000 officers.

Penarth's crime statistics have also seen a rise from the same quarter last year. June 2019 saw 122 crimes in comparison to 105 in June 2018.

He drew attention to the issue of crimes associated with mental health, noting that 16 mental health related incidents had occurred over the past 7 days.

Incidents ranged from assaults on hospital staff to missing patients and assaults and incidents between patients.

He referred to the closeness of Llandough Hospital, which provides mental health services, as a factor in the crime statistics.

Inspector Rice said these incidents, ''Impact the ability to police the wider community. There is a need to reduce this demand.''

He assured councillors that police will always attend these incidents but that more needs to be done to prevent the issues in the first place.