Additional £90 million for London highlights failed arrangements for police funding
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West Midlands Police Authority has said that the decision to grant London an additional £90 million for a thousand new police officers shows that the current financial arrangements for police funding aren’t working. The same financial pressure facing the Metropolitan Police in 2012 is replicated in the West Midlands and other urban police forces across the country, Authority members have argued.
Police Authority Chair Derek Webley said, “Policing across the whole country faces an immense financial challenge, with officer numbers reducing and huge organisational reform. Our problems are made worse by an unfairness in the financial arrangements for police funding: thanks to ceilings and damping, we receive £27 million less than the government’s formula says we need to police our area. Our position is not helped by flat rate cuts to the government policing grant, which further disadvantage forces, typically in higher crime areas, that rely more on central government money and have lower council tax bills.”
He continued, “We have real evidenced need in the West Midlands: we have had a recruitment freeze in place for a number of years and have to require officers to retire when they reach thirty-years service. The way funding is allocated should reflect ongoing need, and a one-off arbitrary distribution of extra money is not fair on the forces that lose out. We recognise that 2012 will be a huge challenge for the Metropolitan Police, but it will also be no less of a challenge for forces outside London. We will be expected to maintain local policing and protection at the same time as we have Olympic teams and events in the region, as well as sending officers to London for the Games. The Authority has expressed on many occasions its concern at how the current financial arrangements for police funding work to the disadvantage of large metropolitan forces.
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