22 October 2004
Vital police services could be cut back unless the government steps in to plug a £350m funding hole, senior police figures have warned.
Representatives from the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Association of Police Authorities met privately with MPs this week to express fears that pressure to keep council tax rises to low single figures threatened frontline policing.
Acpo and the APA are calling for a 5.7% increase in the forthcoming Provisional Police Funding Settlement, although an increase of just 3% is expected.
Keith Luck, director of resources at the Metropolitan Police, said that, as things stand, council tax would have to rise by 9.8% in order to fund planned expenditure.
In addition, the Met is hoping to roll out five Safer Neighbourhood schemes next year. These have been provisionally budgeted at £39m and would take the precept up to 17.4%.
'A good settlement would help enormously,' Luck told Public Finance. 'It's very difficult when we've found £60m of efficiency savings each year — and that's not touching police officer numbers.'
Joanna Carter, financial services manager at Norfolk Constabulary, said: 'Planning for the new efficiency measures hasn't kicked in yet. We're regarding it as a double whammy, it's likely to be tough.'
Norfolk is taking pre-emptive action by piloting a new system of resource management that links resources to performance.
A Home Office spokesman said: 'The funding settlement itself will be set against a background of a huge increase in resources in recent years. Expenditure on policing supported by government grant has increased by 30%, or over £2.3bn, between 2000/01 and 2004/05.'
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