10:54am Thursday 27th September 2007
North Yorkshire's Chief Constable has warned his force could face a "devastating" cut of £10 million in its budget. Mike Laycock and Charlotte Percival examine why the cuts could bite - and gauge the reaction from senior councillors and MPs.
THE Formula Grant Distribution System sounds terribly dull. But it could determine how quickly a policeman can visit your home after you have been burgled, or how effectively police can deal with hooligans causing problems in your neighbourhood.
It is all about how much money North Yorkshire Police receives from the Government to help meet the costs of tackling crime in the county.
This year, the Police Authority is receiving £73 million from the state towards the cost of policing - amounting to around 58 per cent of the total bill of around £126 million. The rest is made up of council tax precepts and a small amount of other income.
But the Government is considering changing the way in which the grant is calculated, and is consulting chief constables and authorities on proposals which could slash the amounts going to rural forces such as North Yorkshire.
As The Press reported exclusively on Tuesday, the police authority says an analysis of these changes has shown that North Yorkshire Police could lose up to £10 million in grant - the equivalent of 300 officers' salaries.
The authority's clerk, Jeremy Holderness, has said the cut could come about because of the county's very low crime rate.
The Chief Constable, Grahame Maxwell, said yesterday that if the changes were brought in, they could be "devastating" for North Yorkshire Police - and would certainly have an impact on the level of service it could deliver to the people of North Yorkshire and York.
"Over recent years we, with the public's help through the council tax, have put North Yorkshire Police on a relatively stable financial footing," he said. "This move could potentially undermine this position."
He said that, to make matters worse, the force was in any event facing a £5 million budgetary gap next year. It was planning to manage that gap through a "stringent analysis of all areas of service".
But he warned: "Any further reductions in grant will put real pressure on our ability to continue to develop safer neighbourhoods - if indeed we can sustain existing levels, which is doubtful - and will certainly preclude any further investment in protective services."
According to documents on its website, the authority also has wider concerns that the proposals could call into question the viability of smaller rural forces.
It believes the proposals disadvantage sparse rural areas or regions with high visitor numbers or low crime rates - all of which are key attributes of North Yorkshire.
The pot of available grant will be determined in the Comprehensive Spending Review, which is set to be announced this autumn.
The authority says the grant system considers local council's individual circumstances, their needs and their potential to raise resources locally, relative to all other councils which provide the same services. The numbers are a series of complex mathematical formulae.
A number of factors are taken into account to explain variations in the cost of providing services, including the fact that areas which can raise more income locally require less support from Government.
The authority says the formula does not take account of visitors to the region, and this has not been addressed within the new proposals - even though statistical analysis has shown that a high proportion of crime committed within the region is from people travelling through.
Instead, the proposals are based on population, disadvantaging sparse rural areas and regions with high visitor numbers.
The authority is also concerned there will be a shift in funding to southern regions at the expense of other areas.
It also claims funding will move away from preventative measures taken towards crime, such as neighbourhood policing, to areas where there is high crime.
The authority believes the proposals do not address the issues of why crime is occurring in the first instance or appear to support visibility and community engagement, saying: "This does seem to undermine the value of neighbourhood engagement and reducing the fear of crime."
A Home Office spokeswoman said it was not prepared to add to comments given to The Press on Monday, when it admitted that North Yorkshire could end up losing cash - but denied that this was because of the county's low crime rate.
She said then that the police funding formula had never been based on crime levels because this would involve penalising success and rewarding failure. Instead it took account of population and a range of demographic and social matters and the Home Office was undertaking a consultation on a "minor change" to the formula.
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