Cheshire Constabulary’s Chief Constable Simon Byrne has appointed Janette McCormick as the next Deputy Chief Constable of Cheshire.

Janette, at present acting Deputy Chief Constable for the force, took up her new appointment on Monday.

She said: “I thoroughly enjoy working with such an excellent team of officers and staff who are fully committed to serving the public of Cheshire. I am delighted and proud to be selected so that I can continue to help lead that team.”

Janette joined Greater Manchester Police in 1989, having done a degree at Nottingham University. Having worked in areas across Greater Manchester, including leading on roads policing, neighbourhood policing and communications, she transferred to Cheshire Constabulary in 2010 as assistant chief constable.

She is currently the national police spokesperson for Gypsies and Irish Traveller issues, and regional lead for public order and operational communications, and is an assessor for the strategic public order command (which trains all specialist officers in this field). She has been a strategic public order and firearms commander since 2008, and has completed the gold incident commanders course.

For the past three years she has chaired Cheshire’s local resilience forum which brings emergency and voluntary responders together, such as the local authorities, health, fire, highway and utilities, to plan and respond to emergencies and test plans in relation to our many industrial sites. In this capacity, she led the planning for Olympic events across the county in 2012.

She has a diploma in coaching and works with the national programme for the progression of underrepresented groups.

Janette has been responsible for the delivery of effective neighbourhood policing across the force area, particularly community contact and engagement, including the development of volunteers (including watch schemes) and specials within the Constabulary. In recent months she has revamped the Constabulary’s public contact strategy, focusing on making it easier for the public to speak to the police about the issues that concern them.

In her previous role, she was responsible for the Constabulary’s uniformed specialist resources (dogs, firearms, public order, underwater), and played a leading role in creating the joint Cheshire North Wales firearms alliance.

Janette has taken responsibility for the development of the Constabulary’s new strategies for drugs, mental health and alcohol. As part of this she is involved in a number of stakeholder and partnership groups across Cheshire, Warrington and Halton and has supported the altogether better initiative in West Cheshire aimed at improving the way in which services are delivered to vulnerable families.

Chief Constable Simon Byrne said: “I am really pleased that Janette has been appointed and I am very confident that she will make a significant contribution to delivering outstanding policing for the communities of Cheshire.”