By David Williams
23 December 2010
Home Office cuts to a policing support body could hit forces with new charges and harm the government’s Big Society agenda, Public Finance has been told.
The National Policing Improvement Agency has been tasked with cutting its spending by £30m in 2011/12. Although this is less than 10% of its total resource budget, 60% of the quango’s annual spend is committed to large-scale investments such as the Airwave radio scheme.
Acting chief executive Nick Gargan told PF he has written to chief constables across England and Wales this week asking them to pay for services previously provided for free, or they would be scrapped.
Among the programmes under threat are: a national senior careers advisory service; a scheme to support minorities in senior policing roles; a programme to develop executive officers.
Also at risk is a network of regional advisers on special constables and volunteering. Gargan said: ‘It supports forces in implementing and delivering the Big Society agenda of more volunteers and more special constables.
‘The risk of not doing that is that forces will be on their own, and will either be less effective or they may incur additional costs by doing things 43 times in 43 different forces that they currently get through one single agency.’
Gargan also said the NPIA planned to save more than a quarter of the £30m sum through phasing out some internal training, and some ‘pretty ruthless cost-cutting’ including the removal of 300 posts.
In a further blow to the Big Society, £350,000 will be cut from funding to a missing persons’ charity.
Forces are also to be billed for use of the National Police Database, administered by the NPIA, saving the agency £5.6m.
Gargan said that larger forces excluding the Metropolitan Police could be charged around £300,000 a year for the service.
‘It’s unwelcome,’ he said, ‘but when we’re being cut at a rate that’s so much more aggressive than police forces I think it is just inevitable.’
He said the full £30m cuts package would have ‘a manageable impact on front-line policing’
Gargan said: ‘That’s not to say it is consequence-free. You can’t take £54m out of an agency [in 2009/10], and £30m the next year, without there being a direct impact on the service provided.’
The NPIA was formed in 2007, but it is to be scrapped in 2012/13 with its functions split between the Home Office and its planned new National Crime Agency.
