Police forces in England and Wales have largely ‘risen to the challenge’ of maintaining services at a time of public spending cuts, the Inspectorate of Constabulary said today.
However, the police watchdog’s report highlights concerns that further spending reductions in future years might hit frontline policing.Policing in austerity: one year on examines the cuts being madeby the 43 forces. It follows up last July’s Adapting to Austerity, which looked at the planned budget reductions for the Comprehensive Spending Review period between 2011/12 and 2014/15.
The police need to save £2.4bn by the end of the Spending Review. Today’s report says that on average forces have to cope with a 20% real cut in central government funding, as well as rising costs of pay, fuel and other utilities.
But they are on track to balance their budgets, according to the watchdog. By April 2012, they had reduced spending by £749m, largely through staff cuts of 17,600. This represented more than half of the total workforce reductions planned by March 2015.
Crime is also continuing to fall, the report says, down by 3% between 2010 and 2011, and the police response to antisocial behaviour has improved.
Planned savings of £2.1bn have been identified so far, the majority through reducing the workforce. However, forces are attempting to protect the number of officers in frontline roles.
Last July, more than 16,000 officer jobs were predicted to be cut. Today’s report found that this figure has now fallen to 13,400 – made up of 5,800 frontline officers and 7,600 non-frontline officers.
The total number of non-frontline staff is set to fall by a third – 20,300 posts, and the report highlights ‘concerns’ about the ability of police to sustain current levels of service over the long term. Forces need to ‘transform their efficiency’ to avoid essential back-office functions simply being transferred to frontline staff.
Inspectors also found that the nature of frontline policing was changing, with cost-cutting reforms including the merging of response and neighbourhood teams between areas, and increasing use of volunteer special constables.
Sir Denis O’Connor, the chief inspector of constabulary, said the 6% reduction in frontline capacity by 2015 could be mitigated by making ‘tactical savings’, but forces needed to ‘transform’ to save further.
He added: ‘We are looking at what might be done to improve the performance of forces’ crime-fighting capability and we are planning a joint project with the National Audit Office to identify learning from a major procurement.’
Inspector Zoe Billingham added that the watchdog was ‘pleased to see that forces have risen to the financial challenge and are generally balancing their books’.
She said: ‘They are making the difficult decisions that are needed to make savings, while taking steps to protect, although not preserve, frontline services. However, the full effects of these choices are in many cases still to be felt. We will continue to monitor the impact of the cuts, both on the service provided to the public, and on the British model of policing itself.’
