PCC's 2026-27 Budget Statement
I hope Panel will forgive me if I break with tradition and read my introductory statement today rather than speaking off the cuff. This is an important matter, and I do not wish to make any inadvertent mistakes – which I am sure would be picked up instantly!
For the convenience of the Panel and our friends in the Fourth Estate, I have printed copies of these remarks available. They will shortly appear on the OPCC website.
I will start, if I may, by making it absolutely clear that despite reports to the contrary, I am not proposing that the police budget should be cut. I am, in fact, proposing that it should increase by £13.5 million. A rise well above the rate of inflation.
The Budget that I put before this Panel is one of balance. It balances the needs of preventing crime, victim support and violence reduction against the request of the Chief Constable for an expansion of the police force. And balances all of that against the financial pressures bearing down on the people of Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.
In real terms, wages in the private sector are no higher than they were 20 years ago.
That’s for those who have jobs. Over the past year the number of people with full-time jobs has fallen and the number of those with no job at all has gone up. Businesses are struggling and going bankrupt – especially those in the hospitality sector.
Times are tough for our constituents. The spectre of poverty hangs over far too many in our city and two counties. Their predicament loomed over my shoulder as I started on the long journey of this Budget Process.
Panel members will know that it is their role to scrutinise my proposal — to appraise that proposal in full context, having heard the substantial rationale behind it. I will therefore concentrate on how I have reached the recommendations within the budget papers in front of you, following the most robust of budget-setting processes. Naturally, I am at the Panel’s disposal should they wish to ask questions.
The role of the PCC in budget-setting is to decide on the size of the overall budget within the parameters laid down by national government. Primarily, of course, that is by deciding on the size of the precept to be charged to Council Taxpayers. Conventionally this is usually expressed in terms of £ per Band D property. Before this budget process began that figure was £300.23 per Band D property.
Once the overall size of the budget has been decided, the PCC must decide how to allocate the money between the various recipients – the Force, the Community Safety Partnerships, Victim Support services, the OPCC and so forth.
In setting both the overall budget and the allocation, the PCC is obliged to consult the Chief Constable and the Chief Executive.
This year a new, more formal and more exhaustive budget-setting process was introduced. I informed the Chief Constable of the Force and Chief Executive of the OPCC of this new process in identical emails on 5th November 2025. Among other things, this email set out the timetable that would be followed.
I also included the following paragraph:
“Over the past three years, I have consistently highlighted to yourself and prior Chief Constables that funding levels for those matters which fall under the remit of the PCC, including policing, will remain challenging and that available resources are unlikely to meet all cost pressures. It has therefore been made clear that budgets will need to be reduced in a planned and sustainable way. I trust that the consistent way in which I have expressed these views has given the Force ample opportunity to develop appropriate plans to manage this reduction while ensuring that service delivery and public safety are not compromised.”
On 14 November, in line with the schedule, both the Chief Constable and Chief Executive submitted their first draft budgets.
The Chief Constable responded by submitting a draft budget that called for an increase of £17.4m, or 6.4%, at a time when inflation is running at 3.2% and the police pay award had been set at 4.2%. The Chief Constable was clear that this would necessitate the precept rising by the maximum allowed by central government. At the time this was assumed to be £14.
I should point out that even if the precept were to be raised by £14, this would still not have been enough to pay for the Chief Constable’s plans for expansion. There would be a gap of £4.3m between the taxes being raised and his spending proposals.
I should also point out that at each meeting the total sum requested by the Chief Constable changed:
£287.3m on 20th November
£287m on 16th December
£284.8m on 13th January (removal of the £3.5m savings identified)
The Chief Constable made a number of suggestions as to how this gap – or “deficit” as he termed it – might be met. One of his suggestions was that the OPCC should take a budget cut of 11%. It is only fair to the Chief Constable to say that he has since verbally told me that what he had meant by this was that he wanted funds from Reserves, not from the OPCC budget. However, the request for funds from the OPCC budget remains in his written proposal.
While the Government has said that the role of the Police and Crime Commissioner will be abolished in 2028, until such time we have a job to do, and a responsibility to the residents in our force area. I understand from the Chief Executive that the Chief Constable had not even discussed this proposal with her.
At the meeting of the Financial Scrutiny Oversight Board, held on 20 November, we discussed both budget proposals. It became clear during these discussions that the Chief Constable was unwilling to compromise on his key requests:
• That the precept should go up by the maximum available
• That all additional sums raised should be given to him
• That the OPCC should accept an 11% cut and the funds given to him instead.
Minutes of this meeting were kept.
After the meeting I consulted with my Deputy PCC, Oliver Bryan, and with the Section 151 Chief Finance Officer Kira Knott.
I summarised my thoughts in an email back to the Chief Constable on 26th November. As well as a number of specific concerns and questions I requested that he submit a revised budget requirement by 10th December that demonstrated, in greater detail, why the operating model of Leicestershire Police was the right one for the communities of LLR and how they could be sure it represented value for money. I suggested that he may want to think of his next submission in terms of five questions, which I set out in an email on 26th November.
I received answers to most of my initial questions on 9th December and updated papers on 15th December, ahead of FSOB on 16th December. This paper outlined a new draft gross budget request of £287m (an increase of £17m or 6.3% from 2025/2026) and a draft capital programme of £9.6m. Based on their income assumptions that left a deficit of £4m.
Within this paper, although the Chief Constable had updated the relevant documents, there was still little rationale as to why the model being put in place was the right one for the communities of LLR.
Further discussions took place at FSOB on 16 December, as scheduled, and the meeting was again minuted.
The provisional settlement from Central Government was received on 19th December. This outlined that the police grant from central government had been set at £174.8m and that the balance would need to be made from the precept levy, which PCCs had been given permission to raise by a maximum of £15 (based on a Band D property). This meant the maximum I, as PCC, could raise would be £111m providing a total maximum income available of £287m or an increase of 6.25%.
I requested that my CFO model all different precept levels between £15 and £10 to enable me to be in an informed position. She found that the difference in budget increase between a £10 precept increase and a £15 precept increase was £1,776,020 or 0.6%.
On 22 December we sat down to look at the options. Dealing with the OPCC was straightforward. They were suggesting a reduction in their budget, to which I was happy to agree.
The Force presented a different picture. The Chief Constable was wanting to expand the Force. However, he had not explained to me why, nor was he able to offer any ways in which some of this cost might be absorbed by savings and was instead insisting that all additional costs be met by increased taxation. At the same time, I was conscious of the increases in taxation being levied by central government.
By this time, we also had the results of the public survey. Those showed that 31% of the public were unwilling to pay any more to the police. When we ran the same question four years ago the figure was 24%. That is a big increase in a short period of time. Combined with the falling percentage of the public who have trust and confidence in the police, that gave me pause for thought.
Among the discussions at these meetings were the following:
• The money sent by Leicestershire Police to the National Police Chiefs Council in London is set to rise by 13%. When I asked why it was rising by 13% when inflation is less than 4%, I was told that this was because it had risen by 13% last year so this seemed a sensible figure to put into the budget. This rise would mean that £377k of taxpayers’ money from Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland would be going to the NPCC this year. That is up from £351k in 2025/26. It would be nice to know why the Chief Constable considers it helpful to the residents of Melton Mowbray or Coalville or Stoneygate that this money should go to London rather than being spent on the police here.
• The cost of the subsidised canteen is increasing by £14k. I asked why this increase was necessary. I was told what good work the canteen does. I have no doubt of this, but there was no explanation given of why it was essential.
• The Police Race Action Plan. No doubt some members of this Panel will think this is a good idea, some may think it a bad idea. That is a discussion for another day. What is relevant here is how much it is costing. I asked the Chief Constable. He told me it was not costing anything. When pushed he admitted that no money was being paid out of the Leicestershire Police, but that there was “staff time” being spent on it. Well, time costs money. If a police officer is working on the Race Action Plan then his wages are a cost to the Leicestershire Police. Perhaps more seriously he is not out catching villains. I asked how much officer and staff time was being spent on this project. The Chief Constable told me he did not know. Given the vast scope of this Plan, we must assume that cost in officer and staff time must be substantial.
Taking everything into account, I thought that a precept rise of £11 would be about right. It would reflect the divided opinion of the public. It was neither the maximum permitted increase of £15 nor the lowest at £0.
At this point I should be quite clear – this viewpoint was wrought from detailed scrutiny of planned expenditure.
I then turned to how to divide up the total amount available.
I decided to allocate:
OPCC - £5.5m
Force - £279m
My Chief Financial Officer then pointed out to me that since I was intending to ask the Force to carry out some of the crime prevention work it would make more sense to pre-allocate that work now. That would enable the Chief Constable to include the money in his budget. I therefore included £1.1m of the Crime Prevention projects to the Force Budget – including measures to combat power tool theft, rural crime and ASB.
I wrote to the Chief Constable and Chief Executive accordingly. In response the Chief Constable sent me a 55‑page response which among other things repeated his key requests:
• That the precept should go up by the maximum available
• That all additional sums raised should be given to him
• That the OPCC should accept an 11% cut and the funds given to him instead.
To this was added a new stipulation:
No funds should be ringfenced.
I had thought that by pre-allocating the crime prevention funds, I was helping matters. It was NOT compromising total operational independence. Nor was it a final settlement, it was a provisional allocation as a suggestion for discussion.
There then followed more discussions and consultation. In the course of these I made the following concessions in the hope of being able to reach a compromise solution which the Chief Executive, Chief Constable and I could all accept.
These included:
• £1.1m of “ringfenced funds” released from ringfencing
• £700,000 from the Budget Equalisation Reserve
• £450,000 from the increased Council Tax collection
• £1.6m of other funds
Disappointingly, the Chief Constable chose not to shift his position nor to answer the legitimate questions that I had raised around expenditure. He merely repeated his requests.
This left me in a bit of a quandary. I had a Chief Executive who had accepted a cut in her budget as a contribution to reducing the tax on the public, but I had a Chief Constable making exceptional requests without explaining why he wanted the additional funds, nor accepting that any of the planned increase of 37 new staff could be funded by reducing expenditure elsewhere. Indeed the Chief Constable sent me a further 30‑page document in which he threatened to get rid of all the PCSOs if I did not give him everything that he wanted.
Chair, I am in the unusual situation of bringing to you a recommendation that has been tried by publicity before the full details have been heard. There are always two sides to a story.
I have not made my decisions lightly, I have listened carefully to all the evidence presented to me. I have wrestled with the option of making the right decision or taking the line of least resistance.
Just because I can ask local people to pay an additional £15 towards policing, it doesn’t mean I should.
The maximum amount of precept is not an automatic entitlement to me, to the Force, or any of the services my office funds. And I could have opted for the maximum precept and allocated the additional amount to other organisations, not the Force. But I haven’t been convinced by any views saying that it was essential to go for the maximum possible.
Chair, I firmly believe my recommendations to be right, to be responsible. I’m aware that in some quarters they are unpopular. But I have a duty to the residents and businesses of Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland to act on their behalf. I do not believe that they should pay a penny more than absolutely necessary.
I began, Chair, by saying that the task of this Panel is to scrutinise how I do my job as PCC. I have given you just a flavour of the background work and scrutiny that had led us to this point.
I put it to you that:
• I have taken a responsible attitude to the increase in the precept given that 31% want no increase at all.
• That I have made numerous concessions to the Chief Constable in an effort to reach a compromise solution we could both accept.
• I have scrupulously followed statute as set out in the Policing Protocol Order 2023 and the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 with generous consultation with the Chief Constable and Chief Executive on equal terms.
In the circumstances I have behaved responsibly throughout.
Chair, naturally I am at the Panel’s disposal to answer any questions that members may have, however, you may wish to hear from my CFO Kira and the Force’s representatives first.