How the mini-budget could impact policing budgets - Dr Alan Billings

The government wants to do a number of things which involve spending more (on defence and to hold down energy costs, for example).

It needs the money to do this – £45bn for energy alone. However, a major source of its income (tax) it wants to forego. It wants to give money back in tax cuts. This is a circle that cannot be squared.

The government thinks it can be squared because it believes that tax cuts will (eventually) cause the economy to grow. People will spend again, business will pick up, and so tax revenues will increase, in the long run.

So, there is a short term – a few years? – problem: not enough money coming in.

If tax rises are ruled out, it can cut spending in some areas of activity and switch the funding to where it wants to give increased support – like defence. Or it can borrow.

It was when the size of the borrowing required became clear that the people who lend the money became alarmed. They were like those bank managers back in the day who decided whether we could be given a loan or not and on what terms.

The terms turned out to be very expensive, loading huge debts and their repayment onto future generations of taxpayers; and this produced turmoil. In order to calm the markets, the government began to talk about not raising benefits in line with inflation and finding ‘efficiency savings’ – cutting the amount of money available for government departments to spend. But now it was boxing itself in. Which departments would be making ‘savings’ since some had already been promised substantially more money not less.

This is where I started to get nervous for policing. If one of the departments that has to ‘save’ – make do with less – is the Home Office, where most of the money for policing comes from, will that ‘saving’ be passed on to police and crime commissioners and chief constables. Will we receive less funding in real terms or inadequate funding from the government in the coming year?

This is my expectation. If the Home Office is squeezed, ministers will squeeze us in turn. Then we have a choice. We can reduce our spending – do less – or use our reserves or put up our local tax, or a combination of the three. What we cannot do, of course, is what the government intends to do: massive borrowing for day-to-day spending. We have a debit not a credit card.

In South Yorkshire we have no ‘spare’ reserves. Many are earmarked to pay the legacy costs of the Hillsborough football disaster (civil claims) and the cost of investigating non-recent child sexual exploitation in Rotherham.

If, therefore, in order to balance our books, I have to ask the Chief Constable to find significant savings, I don’t envy her the task. I have already asked the force to make £7m of efficiency savings, so this will be in addition to what they are currently doing. But most of police spending is on salaries of officers and staff. So where do we spend less? Fewer neighbourhood officers? Fewer detectives? Fewer operators for 999 and 101 calls? Every possibility seems unthinkable.

With so many people struggling financially, how much more would people be willing and able to pay for policing from council tax? There are no easy answers.

A shortened version of the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire’s latest blog post.