Southampton's top police officer Matthew Greening will be answering your questions this afternoon on this site.

All readers are invited to join the live webchat in our forum to put any issues they want raised directly to him.

In the meantime, below he talks a little about his role and hopes for the city.

I am the new police commander for Southampton. I have worked here many times before in several different roles.

I first came here in 1985 when I was a patrol constable working from Portswood. If you had told me then that one day I would come back as the local police commander I wouldn't have believed you, but I quietly held that as an ambition. Now that it has become a reality I take on the role with pride.

Our service and commitment to the city is to reduce crime and make people feel safer. I think the recently published crime figures for last year show that we do deliver on that commitment.

In total we reduced crime by 5.5 per cent - that means 2,048 less times when people were victims. We're also getting better at detecting crime, detecting 3,108 more than the year before. Importantly, this means that there were 3,108 more times when victims had the satisfaction of knowing that the person who committed crime against them was caught.

Click here to read the questions and answers.

However, violent crime is still a serious problem for the city, especially that related to alcohol. We're doing a huge amount of work with our partners to tackle this, but perhaps you have some views on what else we could be doing?

What has been good to see is that our dedicated robbery unit has helped reduce robberies by 19 per cent over the past year and that possession of weapons offences went down by four per cent - perhaps an early success of our Daily Echo backed anti-knife crime campaign. However, too many people, including young people, still carry, threaten or use knives.

Click here to read the questions and answers

But crime data only tells part of the picture and I'm always interested in what people think about policing in the city. We're doing so much more now to try to understand what matters to people and what communities want.

Neighbourhood teams are in place and are working with you to tackle your priorities and resolve problems that are affecting you.

We've started up blogs so that you have extra ways of talking to us. Northam and St Mary's are the first areas to have these at policingnorthamandstmarys.blogspot.

com and the Daily Echo is hosting a live webchat with me today at 1pm where you can quiz me and tell me exactly what you think.

Click here to read the questions and answers

Things have changed a lot since 1985 but the importance of a good police service hasn't. I commit myself and my staff to working hard again this year to make Southampton the safest of cities and to make the people proud of your police.