A projected £1.2 billion shortfall in police funding will continue to grow, leaving forces facing further cuts, police leaders have warned.
Key figures in the service in England and Wales painted a bleak picture after the Chancellor outlined plans for an average 2.3% rise in police spending per year.
Chairman of the National Police Chiefs’ Council Gavin Stephens said: “It is clear that this is an incredibly challenging outcome for policing.
“In real terms, today’s increase in funding will cover little more than annual inflationary pay increases for officers and staff.
“Whilst we await further detail on allocation to individual forces, the amount falls far short of what is required to fund the Government’s ambitions and maintain our existing workforce.
“A decade of under-investment has left police forces selling buildings, borrowing money and raising local taxes to maintain what we already have, with forces facing a projected shortfall of £1.2 billion over the next two years, which is now expected to rise.
“This is against a backdrop of increasing crime rates, with new and escalating threats from organised crime and hostile states, and more offenders being managed in the community as a result of an overstretched criminal justice system.
“Cutting crime isn’t just about officer numbers, we need specialist skills and people, supported with the right systems and technology, to better protect communities.
“We fully support the Government’s drive to cut crime and grow officer numbers, but for these to succeed, investment in policing must live up to the ambition.”
Speaking to journalists on Wednesday afternoon, Norfolk Chief Constable Paul Sanford said police forces have increasingly relied on borrowing money to balance the books, and the cost of debt is expected to go up by 49% in the next three years.
The 2.3% announced by the Government covers last year, which includes national insurance contributions and pay awards already granted, leaving a 1.7% increase in funding for this spending review period, he said.
It will be decided in December how the money will be shared between the 43 forces in England and Wales, and the pay settlement to be given to officers is also not yet known.
Mr Sanford, who is head of the finance co-ordination committee of the National Police Chiefs Council, said he is concerned that some forces have underestimated the cost of pay for the coming year.
He added: “It will be incredibly difficult for the commitment to deliver the additional 13,000 neighbourhood police officers to be delivered within this funding envelope.”
Acting national chairwoman of the Police Federation, Tiff Lynch, accused the Chancellor of failing to listen to police officers or the home secretary in the lead up to the review.
She said: “This spending review should have been a turning point after 15 years of austerity that has left policing, and police officers, broken.
“Instead, the cuts will continue and it’s the public who will pay the price.
“As rank-and-file officers kit up for night duty this evening, they’ll do so knowing exactly where they stand in the Government’s priorities.
“It is beyond insulting for cabinet ministers to call on police to ‘do their bit’ when officers are overworked, underpaid, and under threat like never before.
“They are facing blades and bricks, managing mental health crises while battling to protect their own, and carrying the weight of trauma and financial stress home with them every day.”
The Police Federation claims that police pay has fallen by more than 20% in real terms since 2010, while the number of crimes allocated to each officer has risen by a third.
“We will lose 10,000 experienced officers a year to resignation by the end of this spending review period, driven out by poor pay and unacceptable working conditions,” she added.
“This Chancellor hasn’t listened to police officers. She hasn’t listened to the home secretary. She hasn’t listened to the public’s concerns about community safety.
“We await the Government’s decision on police pay in the coming weeks.
“But with this spending review, the signs are deeply worrying; the consequences will be even more so. And those consequences sit squarely on the shoulders of the Chancellor and the prime minister.”
Roger Hirst and Joy Allen, who are joint leads for funding for the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, said the funding settlement is not enough to meet government targets to reduce crime and called for changes to the current formula used to decide how much each force gets.
Mr Hirst said there is no funding “to meet the challenges of evolving threats and the need to invest in more officers and new technologies”, and in some areas forces will have to rely on council tax hikes to maintain officer numbers.
Ms Allen said: “With a lack of capital investment, many forces are still working from ageing buildings, managing vehicle fleets beyond their operational life and relying on outdated digital infrastructure that no longer meets the demands of modern policing.
“While the ringfenced funding for neighbourhood policing is welcome, the broader settlement does not yet go far enough to support delivery of the Government’s ambitious policing priorities – halving knife crime, tackling violence against women and girls, and embedding the neighbourhood policing guarantee.”
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