A LEADING councillor will challenge for a police commissioner role he wants to see scrapped.

Dr Jonathan Wallace, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrat group on Gateshead Council, has been named the party’s candidate for the post of Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), which he believes should be abolished.

“Liberal Democrats want a more democratic system to ensure all communities in the area of the police force are taken into account when policing plans are drawn up, without the unnecessary overheads of the commissioner and her office,” he said.

In May’s elections, he will be up against Labour’s Vera Baird, a former Solicitor General, and Conservative Stewart Hay, a former police officer.

Dr Wallace has been a councillor since 1986. He grows his own food, keeps bees, poultry and goats and broadcasts on YouTube about self-sufficiency.

His priorities would be protecting frontline policing, keeping bureaucracy to a minimum and seeking to reduce “the increase in crime experienced”.