Policing UK 2013 - Police Federation

OVERVIEW
Funding the force
Bill Wilkinson examines the
prospects for police budgets
Bill Wilkinson is former Chief
Executive and Treasurer of the
South Yorkshire Police Authority
Cutting the national financial
deficit remains the overriding
single priority for the
government. Over the last three years
there has been a significant change in the
rules of the game.
In a perfect world, core public services
such as police would be resourced on
the basis of an accurate assessment of
needs. The world has never been perfect
but since the events of 200 rewrote the
national financial planning assumptions,
every public service has had to come to
terms with shouldering its share of the
cuts. Before the Comprehensive Spending
eview 2010 (CS10) was announced,
there was much talk about priority services
which might be exempted from the worst
of the reductions.
The police service was regularly
mentioned as one of these, but in the end
the service has had to plan on the basis of
a 20 per cent real terms cut in government
funding, with two-thirds of the total
reduction in 201112 and 201213. With
the cuts continuing into 201314 and
beyond, budgets will be one of the most
pressing challenges facing the new police
and crime commissioners (PCCs).
It is important first of all to be clear
about the scale of the cuts. The estimated
impact at budget level is a real reduction
of 14 per cent better than 20 per cent,
but still a far cry from the real growth,
or at worst standstill, of the previous
decade or so. That was perhaps the
biggest change in the game rules. The
police service had been making annual
efficiency ‘savings’ of around 3 per cent
a year since the turn of the century,
but a lot of those savings were recycled
within the budget. The bottom line kept
increasing. Since 200, the bottom line
has gone down. It is far easier to cut jobs
out in one part of the budget if they can
be re-established somewhere else, but
that option is no longer available.
It can also be misleading to talk about
reductions simply in cash terms. The
absolute level of spending is only part of
the answer it’s what PCCs and forces do
with the money that is the real challenge.
Put simply, if the response to a 10 per
cent budget cut is a 10 per cent increase
in productivity, then the service is back
to where it started.
Unequal assessment
The government has clung to this
rationale as its justification for making
the cuts – the efficiency regime showed
what could be achieved. Forces need to
collaborate, share services, outsource,
transfer. For a while it was out of
bounds to talk about cuts in service,
or reductions in police numbers.
Downsiing the back office, collaboration
and outsourcing became the new
mantras. Bureaucracy has become
almost a term of abuse.
18 | POLICING UK