On May 5, members of the public will vote for the second ever Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Essex.

Ahead of the vote, the Guardian has interviewed each of the five candidates, one of whom will replace outgoing Conservative PCC Nick Alston.

The five candidates are Martin Terry for Zero Tolerance Policing, Liberal Democrat candidate Kevin McNamara, Chris Vince of the Labour party, Conservative candidate Roger Hirst and Bob Spink for the UK Independence Party (UKIP).

  • How will you increase public trust in Essex Police?

MT: Give them the resources they need to do the job properly, investigate crime and arrest criminals. Morale is at all-time low. People need to trust that when they call for help it will come.

KM: I will increase community engagement and better communicate how and why decisions about Essex Police are made. Furthermore, I will double down on trying to restore local access to the police, so people feel a connection with the force.

CV: For me this is about ensuring we have policing in local communities, talking to local community groups and finding out what issues are of concern to them.  We also need to ensure that police’s response to crime is better so that people do contact the police when a crime is committed. With a limited budget this is going to be difficult but there are ways, which I will outline later, that can be done to keep police on the streets and in local communities.

RH: By bringing a special constable to every village, and by introducing visible proactive policing to public places. The public will be able to see the police and with modern technologies be able to interact with them more easily and quickly. I also want to see the public being able to access high quality crime prevention advice easily.

BS: By listening to them and delivering my promises to reopen front desks, and putting bobbies on the beat. The Tory Home Office now openly admits the public has lost trust in police because of perverse Tory cuts.

  • What type of crime currently requires the most focus in Essex?

MT: Violent crime, we should all be able to go about our business without fear. Get rid of violent bullies and thugs from our streets. The hallmark of a civilized society is community safety; we have lost community safety in many areas. I will also be reversing the PCC position on support of part night lighting, I will do this on the grounds of criminal activity and also highway safety which seems to have been forgotten, road fatalities and injuries are the worse for years.

KM: With 85 incidents of domestic abuse every day in Essex, with many yet to be investigated, and a rise in knife crime over the past few years, we need to focus on efforts to combat that and ensure we keep Essex safe for everyone.

CV: There are a number of areas and it is difficult to focus on just one, but the main things that I would like to focus on in my Police and Crime Plan would be tackling violent crime, including knife crime and domestic violence, as well as looking at how we prevent crime through education and visible policing. I also think we need to develop a clear plan about how we tackle child sexual exploitation in Essex and again this would be a key area of my Police and Crime Plan.

RH: My five point plan focuses on anti-social behaviour, which is a blight on so many people's lives and is so often a way into more serious criminal activity; domestic violence; serious street violence, gangs and organised crime; we also need better local and accessible policing to prevent common crimes such as burglary and rural crime. It is always a balance in dividing resources between those crimes which are most harmful and those which have the most victims, but if you get that balance wrong you see crime rising and more criminals getting in to a cycle of increasingly serious criminality.

BS: All crime is unacceptable.  But violence and abuse of the elderly, women and children is most offensive.

  • What do you think the hardest thing about being PCC would be?

MT: I am going into this with my eyes wide open. It could almost be described as a poison chalice, however I have been an independent for 16 years, I am used to adversity. The hardest battle, which I will win one way or another, will be to get Essex Police properly resourced. I have a clear strategy to achieve this however.

KM: Essex is a geographically large and very diverse place in many ways. Being present and campaigning and listening across all of Essex over the next four years will be very challenging.

CV: Working with such a restricted budget. My priority as PCC will be to protect our frontline officers but this will of course mean making difficult decisions about other services.  I want to do everything I can to decrease crime in Essex and keep the residents of our county safe, but the reality is when the budget has been cut to such an extent it will be impossible to keep everyone happy all of the time.

RH: The main challenge for the PCC is making sure the police are in touch with the needs of the communities of Essex, and ensuring there is a strong relationship of trust between the police and the law-abiding public.

BS: Keeping the job non-political and working all hours for Essex people. The PCC must be independent. As an Essex MP, I demonstrated consistent independence from political party whips and was the hardest working of all 650 UK MPs.

  • What would you do differently to Nick Alston?

MT: I am not in a big political party unlike the current PCC, I will stand up for Essex 100 per cent. I do not care who I annoy or upset in government, I will be a strong loud leader for Essex. The current PCC has only met with Essex Police Federation twice in four years which very much encapsulates his approach, it is almost unbelievable. I believe in our police, in community safety and the link to our civilized society, I also believe that police should be protected from the austerity cuts in the same way as education and health; you simply should not cut our police, the police are fundamental to our civilization. I am standing under the banner of Zero Tolerance Policing ex-Chiefs, I will not follow any party political line. Essex Police and community safety will be my priority. I will be working with a number of ex-Essex police chiefs who will enable me to understand and make informed decisions based on many years of police experience, not the doctrines of a political party. An ex-chief will be my deputy.

KM: I would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our ever more put upon Police force and be their voice in the Home Office, and be a voice of Essex residents who are put in harm's way or left behind by this government's policies.

CV: I would meet regularly with the Police Federation and have more contact with the police officers themselves.  The current PCC has only met with the Police Federation twice in four years. I have pledged to have regular (at least six times a year) meetings with the Police Federation as I believe strongly that at a time when the budget for policing has been cut, we need to support those officers who remain to do their jobs, in particular ensuring they are able to take their rest days which are owed to them (over 5000 in the last year alone) and cut down on sickness leave caused by excessive workload. I also want to work more closely with police staff and their unions. Finally let me say I want the police officers and police staff we have in Essex to feel valued. I want to be a PCC who acknowledges the hard work they do under increasingly difficult circumstances and that the majority of them do a brilliant job.

RH: My own track record shows leadership skills, innovation and an ability to inspire. I bring exceptional financial management experience and have successfully re-shaped and improved large organisations. My focus will be on effective local policing.

BS: Put bobbies on the beat, open police stations and fight to control immigration to keep criminals and terrorists out.

Read part one here.