Memorandum submitted by West Midlands
Police
West Midlands Police currently has 14,042 employees,
made up of 8,776 police officers, 4,443 police staff and 823 PCSO.
This is an increase of 1,774 compared to five years ago, when
we had 12,268 employees, made up of 8,275 police officers, 3,869
police staff and 124 PCSO.
Over the last five years we have been able to increase
our overall staffing levels due to effective financial management
and by redirecting savings into staffing. The numbers have also
increased due to changes in force funding, especially in relation
to specific grants for PCSO and Counter Terrorism which account
for around two thirds of the total increase in numbers.
We are currently working on our medium term
financial projections, and assessing the potential impacts of
the predicted reductions in public sector funding. Whilst there
is a lack of clarity around funding allocations beyond 2010-11,
we are anticipating and planning for needing to make spending
reductions in the order of 10% over three years. Clearly a reduction
of this nature would be difficult to achieve without affecting
overall staff numbers as staffing costs account for over 80% of
the total budget.
The Force has recently launched a wide ranging
organisational change programme which will release cost savings
for the future. The number of Operational Command Units is being
reduced from 21 to 10, with resultant savings on overheads and
management. In addition, back office functions are being reviewed
and it is forecast that we can save in the order of £5 million
by restructuring how these services are delivered. However, this
will in itself not be sufficient to meet the forecast funding
gap and all areas of business will come under intense pressure.
In anticipation of the possibility of potential redundancies,
we have ensured that the relevant statutory bodies have been served
with notice.
In terms of force funding, we have been disadvantaged
for a number of years due to the floors and ceilings mechanism
that is applied to the national formula grant allocation. Since
2003-04 we have lost over £250 million of funding in this
way, and this has placed additional pressure on our budgets to
be able to respond effectively to the growing complexity of operational
policing issues in a large metropolitan area. Although there has
been some relaxing of the mechanism in recent years, we are still
likely to lose around £40 million based on the provisional
funding for 2010-11. As the service moves into a tighter financial
environment we would want the needs based formula to be implemented
in full and the floors and ceilings mechanism phased out so that
national resource allocation reflects relative need more accurately.
We also have some concerns about the potential
impact of funding reductions on local partnership working. In
recent years we have working closely and effectively with local
partners and been able to access funds through local partnership
bodies to target specific problem areas at neighbourhood level.
This has undoubtedly helped to raise public confidence and feelings
of safety, but it is concerning that such funds may not be available
in the future to provide local reassurance and confidence in policing
in this way.
November 2009
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