A new survey says more than half of voters don’t know who is in the running to be their next crime commissioner – with less than a week to go before the election.

The Neighbourhood and Home Watch Network poll also shows 81 per cent of those who responded had no direct contact with their current commissioner since they were elected nearly four years ago.

People in Cumbria will decide who they want to be their next police and crime commissioner (PCC) on Thursday. The survey attracted more than 5,000 responses from Neighbourhood Watch members and coordinators.

David Farmer, a trustee and board member of the Cumbria Neighbourhood Watch Association, said he believed the current commissioner, Richard Rhodes, had done a good job but it had taken a while for the public to understand the role.

“Mr Rhodes has been a fantastic support for this association and we have worked closely with him and he has involved us in the work that he does,” Mr Farmer said. “I’m both surprised and not surprised by those results because this was the first time. I think now it’s coming to the end of the first term it’s now that people are getting used to the fact that they are there and what they do.”

Jim Maddan, chairman of Neighbourhood and Home Watch Network, said: “These results show that, not surprisingly, our members and co-ordinators are very interested in who is holding the police to account in their area. But it also shows that elected PCCs – and organisations like ours – still have work to do to raise the profile of the PCC locally.”

Just under half of respondents didn’t vote in the 2012 election, with lack of knowledge of the candidates and unawareness of the elections cited as two of the main reasons. Sixty-seven per cent say they will be at the polls on Thursday.

The candidates in Cumbria are: Reg Watson, Labour, Peter McCall, Conservative, Michael Pye, UKIP, Loraine Birchall, Liberal Democrats and independent candidate Mary Robinson.