Metropolitan Police Authority to lobby parliament - Funding crisis risks cuts in police services

72/04
19 October 2004

Representatives of the Metropolitan Police Authority and the Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, Sir Ian Blair, will join with other police authorities from across England and Wales to lobby MPs in Westminster today (Wednesday 20th October) and highlight the effects of a projected £350m funding shortfall.

In private meetings taking place in parliament, over 100 MPs will be told how pressure on budgets will combine next year with an edict from Whitehall to keep council tax levels to a minimum, causing a squeeze in funding that will threaten front line police services. Metropolitan Police Authority members will meet personally with London Members of Parliament to set out how the funding crises could hit police services across the capital.

All police authorities will have to find extra cash to meet new statutory and policy responsibilities; implement the government’s police reform agenda; for pay inflation; forensic, IT and technological developments; and to fund a 12% rise in the cost of pensions as a result of mass officer recruitment in the 1970s.

Funding existing services, and meeting these added pressures, means that police authorities need at least a 5.5% increase from the Home Office. But indications are that funding will increase by only 3% for 2005/06. A cap on council tax rises to low single figures would leave a £350m shortfall.

Len Duvall, Chair of the MPA, said:

“Central funding has fallen short of what we needed in previous years, but we have been able to make up the difference from local council tax.

“We can’t continue to do this, because the public are getting fed up of rising council tax, and the government are threatening to cap increases. This means that without at least 5.5% funding from the government, cuts in police services may have to be made.”

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