Police Funding

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Damian Green)]

I have today placed in the Library the Home Office’s proposals for the aggregate amount of grant to be paid to local policing bodies in England and Wales for 2014-15, for the approval of the House. Copies are also available in the Vote Office.

Today, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) will be publishing proposals for the distribution of funding to English local authorities for 2014-15. Council tax freeze grant relating to the 2011-12 and 2013-14 schemes and local council tax support (LCTS) grant previously paid to police and crime commissioners (PCCs) in England by DCLG will in 2014-15 be paid to PCCs by the Home Office. This is a result of our ambition to simplify police funding arrangements.

The Welsh Government will shortly be setting out their proposals for the allocation of funding in 2014-15 for local policing bodies in Wales.

Earlier this month, the Chancellor announced further reductions to departmental budgets for 2014-15 and 2015-16 in his autumn statement. For 2014-15, the Home Secretary has decided that central Government revenue funding to the police will be protected from further reductions. This decision means that the overall police funding settlement for 2014-15 will remain at £8.5 billion, as announced at the time of the spending round.

Decisions on the impact of the Chancellor’s autumn statement on police funding for 2015-16 will be made at a later date after careful consideration of all Home Office budgets. This decision will take time and we have therefore decided not to publish indicative allocations for 2015-16 in this statement.

In my statement accompanying the provisional police grant report 2013-14, I announced that current damping arrangements would continue in 2014-15. This means that every police force area will face the same percentage reduction in core central Government funding.

The police reforms we have introduced have seen the biggest change to the policing landscape in a generation. These reforms are working and crime is falling. We have put policing back in the hands of the public through directly elected police and crime commissioners. We have given chief constables greater operational independence by scrapping national targets. We are improving police skills through the new College of Policing. We have made sure we reward skills, not just time served, through the Winsor reforms to pay and conditions. And we have established the National Crime Agency to lead the fight against serious and organised crime.

These are the most radical reforms in the history of policing. And as Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary’s July 2013 “Policing in Austerity” report states, the police continue to rise to the financial challenge. The proportion of officers on the front line is increasing, crime continues to fall and victim satisfaction is up.

In 2014-15 we have decided to establish a police innovation fund worth £50 million, funded through a top-slice from police main grant, which builds on the recently announced £20 million precursor fund for 2013-14. The police innovation fund will provide police and crime commissioners with the opportunity to submit bids on initiatives that will promote collaboration, including with other forces, emergency services, criminal justice agencies and local government, and improve their use of digital working and technology in order to deliver sustainable improvements and efficiencies in the way their police force operates in future.

The Home Secretary has also decided to allocate funding to other specific areas where there is a national policing interest. We have already announced that the Independent Police Complaints Commission will be expanded in order that it is able to deal with all serious and sensitive cases involving the police. In 2014-15 we are providing an additional £18 million from the police settlement to build up the resource and capability of the IPCC to begin taking on additional cases from next year. We are also providing funding of up to £0.8 million from the wider Home Office budget in 2013-14 to help with transition costs as well as a further £10 million in capital in 2014-15.

In 2014-15 the Home Secretary has also decided to provide HMIC with £9.4 million from the police settlement to fund a new annual programme of all force inspections. This will enable the public to see how well their force is performing when it comes to cutting crime and providing value for money.

Our decisions on police funding in 2014-15 will provide the police with the resources they need to carry out their important work. We recognise that the funding settlement remains challenging. However, as HMIC has identified, there are areas where the police can continue to make further savings without affecting the level of service to the public, for example through greater collaboration across operational and support services, through improved procurement of goods and services, and by improving productivity. The Home Secretary and I are confident that police and crime commissioners will continue to deliver these efficiencies.

I have set out below how we propose to allocate the police funding settlement between the different funding streams in 2014-15.

The Police Grant Settlement 2014-15