Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what amendments were made to the formula for police funding following the consultation process with individual police forces.

We received over 1,700 responses to our recent public consultation on proposed police funding reforms. The overwhelming view from respondents was supportive of a new formula and the principles we set out. We have carefully analysed the feedback received and, in light of this, are proposing a number of refinements to the model:

- retain population volume and households with no adults employed and dependent children as core indicators;

- clarify that the second population characteristic we intend to use is the updated ‘urban adversity’ version of the Acorn 5 indicator which has replaced the old ‘hard pressed’ version (this ensures that the model is in line with CACI Limited’s current Acorn classifications);

- revise the bar density measure so that it takes account of bar volume as well as bar density, reflecting strong consultation feedback that this better captures scale and the impact of clusters of bars and the night-time economy within a force area;

- remove ‘Band D equivalent properties’ as a core indicator, reflecting strong consultation feedback that this variable did not adequately capture the ability to raise additional precept income as intended;

- add an Area Cost Adjustment (ACA) to the model to reflect regional variations in the cost base.

These proposed refinements to the model produce an adjusted set of weightings across the remaining four core indicators as follows:

The Policing Minister wrote to all PCCs and Chiefs on 8 October to provide detail on the proposed refinements and to set out the indicative force-level impact and invite further comments.

We will then finalise the model in light of further feedback received.