100s more sign petition on cuts

4:18pm Tuesday 16th October 2007

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HUNDREDS of signatures in support of The Press's Fund Our Force petition have arrived at the newspaper beyond the deadline - because of the postal strike.

Some readers posted coupons well before we took our campaign to Westminster last week, but they have only now turned up in the post. Some petition forms have also only just been returned from newsagents who placed them on their counters.

An additional 350 signatures have arrived on top of the 1,000 signatures handed over to York MP Hugh Bayley in London last week for presentation to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.

But The Press will not let the strike prevent our readers' message getting through to ministers, and the extra petition forms and coupons will now be despatched straight to Westminster.

The petition calls on the Home Secretary to ensure North Yorkshire Police retains adequate funding to keep crime levels down, and abandons plans that could mean a £10 million reduction in the Government's grant to the force.

The campaign was launched after Chief Constable Grahame Maxwell warned last month that a cut of up to £10 million could be made as a result of a proposed new funding formula for police forces across England and Wales.

The proposals were put out to public consultation, with last Wednesday named as the deadline for submission of comments.

Under the new formula, extra money would go to high-crime, urban forces and less to low-crime rural forces such as North Yorkshire, leading to claims that the force would end up being penalised for its success in fighting crime.

The Chief Constable warned that such a cut would have "devastating" consequences for frontline policing, and the Police Federation - which represents ordinary bobbies - later claimed it would be "potentially catastrophic."

The petition was signed by all members of City of York Council before a recent meeting, and it has been backed by retailers worried that cutbacks in policing would hamper their efforts to tackle shoplifting.

Mr Bayley said after a brief meeting with the Home Secretary that he was confident North Yorkshire would not suffer a cut as bad as £10 million, but said he would oppose any reduction.