Leicestershire’s Police and Crime Commissioner and the Force’s Chief Constable have described proposed changes to police funding as “unwelcome, ill-thought through and lacking in robustness”.
The Government have been consulting on changes to the funding formula which calculates how much each force in England and Wales is given for policing by central Government.
In their joint response to the consultation, Sir Clive Loader and Simon Cole urge the Government to re-think the proposals, stating: “We do not want to suffer the consequences of having an ill-thought through funding model imposed early”.
Later today (Tuesday 3 November) Mr Cole and three other Chief Constables will give evidence about the proposed changes to the Home Affairs Select Committee.
The current model allocates £101 per head of population in Leicestershire, which is already significantly lower (by 5%) than the national average, which is just over £106 per head of population. The new plans would see Leicestershire’s budget cut by a further £700,000 per annum. And later this month, the amount of money to be shared between forces could be further cut by between 25% and 40% when the Government announces its Comprehensive Spending Review.
The new funding formula plans propose to calculate the share of funds for each force by using four “indicators” which Mr Cole and Sir Clive say “are not robust”.
They say: “The indicators… are not an adequate representation of new and emerging crime types… and certainly do not capture the work carried out by police forces nationally around threat, risk and harm”.
They argue that the new indicators do not sufficiently take into account the diversity of the population in each police force area and conclude: “By using only four different indicators, the formula cannot accurately reflect the very complex mix of demand for both crime and non-crime policing services”.
Read the full response from Mr Cole and Sir Clive.
Posted on Monday 9th May 2016