DORSET Police has appointed James Vaughan as the new Deputy Chief Constable for the force.

He is currently the Assistant Chief Constable of Dorset Police and will take up his appointment as the Deputy Chief Constable on May 1.

Chief Constable Debbie Simpson said: “I am delighted to announce that Mr Vaughan has been successful in his application as the new Deputy Chief Constable for Dorset Police. “He has a wealth of operational policing experience and I am very pleased indeed that he will be joining our team. “It is encouraging that there was significant interest in this post from all over England and Wales and Mr Vaughan was selected after a thorough and competitive selection process.

“All candidates presented extremely strong evidence and are to be congratulated on their performance during the selection process.

“I would like to offer my congratulations to Mr Vaughan and look forward to continuing to work closely with him to help make Dorset safer.”

The appointment of Mr Vaughan will follow the retirement of former Assistant Chief Constable Adrian Whiting who has served as the Acting Deputy Chief Constable since October 2012.

Mr Vaughan joined Dorset Police in 2012 following the retirement of former Assistant Chief Constable (Operations) Mike Glanville. He came from Wiltshire Police where he started in 1992 working in various uniform and detective roles in the northern part of the county. On promotion he served as a Detective Sergeant and Detective Inspector in Swindon leading up to 2005, when he was selected to join the high potential development scheme. As a Chief Inspector he was the staff officer to the Chief Constable and later led the centralisation of roads policing within the operations portfolio. Promoted to Detective Superintendent in 2007, Mr Vaughan led the force’s response to major, serious and organised crime and led numerous programmes of change to deliver significant capability development for the force, whilst leading and managing numerous murder and other major crime investigations. Upon promotion to Chief Superintendent, Mr Vaughan initially led the development of Citizen Focused Policing, partnerships and Safer Neighbourhoods. He has led various collaboration programmes regionally and developed and implemented force restructures to meet the austerity challenges.

He holds a masters degree in criminology and police management and has published research on his academic interests in child homicide. Mr Vaughan is the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) lead for the South West Regional forensic services collaboration. He is married to Sacha and has five children, two of whom are at university. He enjoys natural history, music, sports and keeping fit.