Andrew Dismore

Introduction: Summary 

 

The Metropolitan Police Service is underfunded by central government and having had to make £600 million pounds worth of savings since 2010, and is having to find another £400 million pounds in savings by the end of the decade.

 

The Conservative Manifesto does not guarantee police budgets, opening up potential for further cuts which undermine the ability of the police to keep Londoners safe.

 

Changes to the police funding formula will further reduce the police budget for MOPAC and the MPS.

 

Despite the lack of funding, the Mayor has committed to protect neighbourhood policing by introducing a minimum standard of 2 officers and 1 PCSO for every ward in London.[1]

 

As a result of cuts to Government police funding, in the past four years the MPS has had to lose more than 100 police stations and 2,800 police staff and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs).[2]

 

MPS Budget

 

The Metropolitan Police Service is underfunded by central government and having had to make £600 million pounds worth of savings since 2010 after the national policing budget was cut by 20 per cent.  It is having to find another £400 million pounds in savings by the end of the decade.

 

The Met’s budget is increasingly stretched. Over the past four years the Met has taken £700 million out of its budget – approximately 20 per cent of its costs. As a result of cuts to Government police funding, in the past four years the MPS has had to lose more than 100 police stations and 2,800 police staff and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs).[3]

 

The Met estimates that it will face additional pressure of £443 million by 2020-21 to achieve a balanced budget and therefore will have to make £443 million of savings.^[4]

 

The Government  has further  added to the pressures by not funding the higher than expected pay rise this year, (2% instead of 1%, though still below inflation) costing an extra £18 million per year.

 

 

National and International Capital Cities Grant

 

London receives £174 million from the Home Office from the National and International Capital Cities Grant (NICC) whereas the total spend on activity linked to London’s position as a major capital was £346 million. This means London currently has a £172 million shortfall. The Home Office’s expert panel suggested the rate should increase to £281 million. The Conservatives have underfunded the capital’s police and not provided the resources which are required to keep Londoners safe.[5]

 

The MPS also faces other costs related to policing London as a capital city. For example, the Met. spent £7 million on policing football matches last year, of which it recovered just £361,000 of the total cost, leaving them with a bill of nearly £6.7 million[6].

 

National Funding Formula

 

London will receive £1.90 billion from Central Government in 2017/18.[7] Following this, funding may fall if  the new funding allocation formula is  introduced.  The new formula moves to funding based more on population than need and means  London would receive less funding.

 

The Mayor claims that “Londoner’s safety will be put at risk if police funding is cut further, and that the Met stood to lose “between £184m and £700m from its yearly budget”.^[8] The figures are from 2015 Funding Formula review, which was scrapped because of issues with the accuracy of the data, and assumptions from the 2015 Comprehensive Spending Review. The Government still has not confirmed whether it will proceed with this review.

 

Request for additional funding from the Home Office

 

In response to Unmesh Desai’s question about policing budgets at the 6 July Policing Plenary the Mayor said:

 

“I am afraid all I have is bad news. There is no confirmation from the Government that it is going to not proceed with a police funding formula change. I will just remind you that the last time it put forward a police funding formula change, we lost between £184 million and £700 million. Roughly speaking, £700 million is 12,000 officers. There is no movement in relation to not proceeding with the further £400 million worth of cuts to the MPS’s budget, no movement in relation to funding us fully for us being a National and International Capital City, no movement in relation to lifting the public pay cap of 1% and then funding that, and no movement in relation to giving a real-terms increase in our funding, which is [linked to] inflation rather than a flat-cash budget as in the last Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR)”[9].

 

In the same meeting the Mayor announced that the MPS was making an application to the Home Office’s Special Grant Programme for a one-off payment to recover some of the costs incurred during the attacks at Westminster, Borough Market and Finsbury Park Mosque.

 

Police Station Closures

 

The Mayor has warned that continued Government cuts to the Metropolitan Police’s budget could mean up to half of London’s police station front counters may close.

 

The Met have had to make £600 million of savings since 2010 after the national policing budget was cut by 20 per cent and the number of police front counters in London dropped from 136 in 2013 to 73 today as the Met sold off buildings to cut costs and raise money[10].

 

Yet the previous Mayor still refused to raise the policing council tax precept, leading to a £17 million shortfall. Sadiq Khan has taken the decision to raise the policing council tax precept as far as he can, which raised £11.3m for the Met in 2017/18. The Mayor will spend £613 million on policing from mayoral funds.[11]

 

At the 6 July Plenary the Mayor said:

 

I have had to add in almost £30 million because of the decision by the previous Mayor to reduce the police precept. The Home Secretary wrote to me in December last year [2016] and she made the point to me that overall funding to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) would have increased by over £20 million in 2016/17 compared to the previous financial year had the precept been maximised. Instead, MOPAC – (brackets Boris Johnson) – opted to reduce the precept by the largest amount in the country, forgoing over £30 million of income[12].

 

 

Further pressures: police pay

 

The Government is going to lift the public sector pay cap for the police and prison officers. Public sector pay was frozen for two years in 2010, except for those earning less than £21,000 a year, and since 2013, rises have been capped at 1% – below the rate of inflation[13].

As  the Government doesn’t adequately fund the Met. this will put additional pressure on its budget. At the July Policing Plenary the Deputy Commissioner told the Assembly that every 1% on police pay puts £25 million of pressure into the budget[14]. The Mayor has more recently  said the figure is £18 million per year.

 

He added that: “the decision whether to lift the pay cap is absolutely a political and national decision in terms of the budget.  We do not control that from London”[15]. 

 

Security and Funding

 

• Previous Commissioner Bernard Hogan Howe said in 2015 : “It’s a lot of money and a massive change and as a result of that, I genuinely worry about the safety of London. Should we get a roaming firearms attack, could we deal with it?’[16]
• Commissioner Cressida Dick said in an interview: ‘I am in a conversation with the Government to say, given what has happened, we actually do not need large cuts, that is for sure’.[17]
• Steve Finnigan, outgoing chief constable of Lancashire said: ‘I have said for many years now that there will be a time lag [on the impact of cuts] and I think we are seeing that now. The cracks are appearing in policing … we are at a tipping point and we need an honest conversation. I do think people are less safe in this country now and I say that with a heavy heart’.

 

 

 

[1] Mayor of London, March 2017, Police and Crime Plan 2017-21, accessed 04/06/17.

[2] Mayor of London, March 2017, Police and Crime Plan 2017-21, accessed 04/06/17.

[3] Mayor of London, March 2017, Police and Crime Plan 2017-21, accessed 04/06/17.

[4] Met Police Business Plan 2017-18, Section 5.3, page 47

[5] MOPAC 2017/18-20/21 Budget Submission

[6] Revealed: £6.7m bill paid by Londoners for policing football matches, ES, 31.07.2017 [accessed 08.09.2017]

[7] MOPAC, December 2016, MOPAC Budget Submission 2017/18-20/21, accessed 08/05/17.

[8] Mayoral press release, 16 January 2017

[9] Answer from the Mayor, London Assembly Plenary, 6 July 2017

[10] Mayoral press release, 6 July 2017

[11] MOPAC 2017/18-20/21 Budget Submission

[12] Answer from the Mayor, London Assembly Plenary, 6 July 2017

[13] BBC, Public sector pay cap to be lifted for police and prison officers, 11.09.2017 [accessed 11.09.2017]

[14] Answer from the Deputy Commissioner of the MPS, London Assembly Plenary, 6 July 2017

[15] Ibid

[16] The Guardian, October 2015, Met Police Chief warns scale of cuts threaten safety of public, accessed 26/06/17.

[17] The Telegraph, 20^th June 2017, Cressida Dick ‘stretched’ Met does not need more cuts, accessed 26/06/17.