Police funding briefing – July 18

The problem is that the Metropolitan Police is underfunded, due to massive cuts in its budget from central Government resulting in a significant loss of police officers across London.

The Conservative Government has imposed cut after cut on the Met.’s budget. Since 2010, the Met.’s Government grant funding has fallen by more than £700 million, nearly 40 per cent in real terms, with yet more to come. By the end of the current budget cycle in two years’ time, the total shortfall will amount to over £1 billion.

This is compounded by the Government’s consistent failure to meet only half the costs of London’s capital city expenditure; The Met spends some £346m a year on work to police London as a major global capital and the seat of Government. This includes diplomatic protection, and policing major events such as protests, concerts, football matches and state visits such as the visit of the President of the United States of America. When the Home Office’s own expert panel reviewed the figures it suggested the Met should receive £281m a year- but ignoring this figure, the Home Office’s International Capital Cities Grant (NICC) to the Met., (which is paid retrospectively), underfunds London by around £172m a year, so the Met is significantly short-changed.

For this year, the Government awarded the police a well deserved 2% pay rise- but then refused to fund it, adding to budget pressures.

Boris Johnson as Conservative Mayor also failed to increase the policing precept in the Council Tax: we are also paying the price of that de facto cut too, 2% a year compounded over 8 years of his rule has had a big impact that cannot be made back up.

Government funding as a share of the Met.’s budget has fallen to the extent that London taxpayers now have to meet 25% of the costs, rather than the 20% before this Government came to power.

Expenditure on the police per head of the population has fallen faster in the Met. than in any other police force. London has seen a rapid population growth in recent years, and with savings of £720 million delivered by the Met since 2010, net revenue expenditure per head of population reduced from £423 in 2012/13 to £337 in 2016/17. It is the largest reduction nationally at 20 per cent, compared to six per cent across the country.

All this deliberate underfunding has led to the loss of a third of police staff posts – down from 14,330 to 9,985, and two-thirds of PCSOs – down from 4,607 to 1,591, as well as 114 police station front counters and 120 police buildings, with   borough mergers also needed to save costs too. We have lost thousands of police officers. It is hardly surprising that crime has gone up by 5% in London- and even more in the rest of the country.

Mayor Sadiq Khan has repeatedly warned that with yet further cuts needed due to Government funding cuts, the Met is running out of options. London’s police officer numbers have already fallen to just below 30,000 for the first time since 2003; and by 2021, numbers could fall significantly lower –which presents a serious risk to Londoners’ safety.

Contrast this with the 36,000 officers under the last Labour Mayor and Labour Government. When I was Hendon’s Labour MP , these officer numbers enabled me to negotiate with the then Commissioner a Safer Neighbourhood Team of 9- a sergeant, 2 PCs and 6 PCSOs – for each ward in Barnet. Now, we are down to 2 PCs and 1 PCSO per ward as dedicated ward officers.

In 2010 the Metropolitan Police had 4.1 officers per 1,000 Londoners but, after crippling government cuts to police spending, the ratio has now dropped to 3.3 officers per 1,000 – the lowest point for twenty years. Moreover, that ratio is based on the resident population, and does not take into account the million plus people who commute into London daily to work, or those who come to London to holiday.

To go back to the number of police officers we last had under the Labour Government and previous Labour Mayor, the police precept element of the Council Tax would need to increase by over 39%. That figure gives the same number of warranted constables, but would actually need to be higher as a proportion of those extra officers would need to be in the supervisory ranks of sergeants and inspectors; nor would that replace the lost PCSOs and civilian Met. staff or the closed police stations.

To fund the police at a level which would restore all these other cuts too, we would need to increase the Council Tax police precept to raise an amount equivalent to the lost central Government grant of £1,065 billion: the rise would be a whopping 123%, which is clearly not a practical proposition.

The Mayor’s council tax for the current year 2018/19 includes an overall 5.1 per cent increase to his precept. All of the proceeds will go to the Metropolitan Police and the London Fire Brigade. This will enable the Met. to maintain an average of around 30,000 officers for the year. £20.1m is allocated to cover the cost of the police pay increase, as well as an extra £15m. for knife crime. The remaining £13.9 m will be available to maintain officer numbers.

The Mayor is also giving an additional £55m to the Met. so they do not have to borrow for police buildings and new technology, saving over £3 million in interest charges. He will also provide £5m to fund officers as the Met.’s recruitment drive starts.

In his Budget Guidance for next year, the Mayor is reluctantly proposing to increase his share of council tax that goes directly to the police by 5.5 per cent and represents the maximum the Government have indicated they will permit. This means that the Mayor would be able to raise an estimated overall total of £690m through the policing precept, with an additional £49m raised as a result of this proposed 5.5 per cent increase. The Mayor also intends to increase his non-policing precept for 2019-20 by a 1.99 per cent to provide extra funds for the London Fire Brigade which has also been the victim of government cuts.

From 2019-20, Sadiq will also invest £59m a year helping avoid falling officer numbers at this crucial time: it will save 1,000 police officer posts that would otherwise be unaffordable. This will come from business rates income.  Even so, as funding pressures mount, officer numbers are still expected to fall below 30,000 in 2021.

So with the Government still refusing to act in the face of recorded violent crime, including knife crime and moped attacks, across the capital, the Mayor is taking the difficult decisions  to keep officer numbers up so far as he is able to do, but he cannot raise the funds needed to get back to the 36,000 officers we need.

 

Andrew Dismore AM

Labour London Assembly Member for Barnet and Camden

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