March 2018
The Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government published the council tax figures for Police and Crime Commissioners for 2018/19 on Wednesday 28 March. These figures show an increase of £280m in council tax income in 2018/19, which means that overall funding in the police system will increase by £460m in 2018/19.
This factsheet sets out not only how much funding each force will receive, but also explains more about how they can improve efficiency and productivity.
Since summer 2017, the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service Nick Hurd has spoken to all 43 police forces in England and Wales to understand how demands on the police are changing. The police are seeing more complex crime being reported, including previously hidden crimes such as Child Sexual Exploitation and modern slavery, and forces must respond to the terrorist threat.
The UK Statistics Authority have recently noted that arrangements for police funding are complicated and whilst they acknowledge that these Home Office factsheets are helpful, they suggest the Home Office should produce a regular analysis of police funding in line with the principles set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics. The Home Office Chief Statistician is currently considering how this could be achieved.
Funding for local police forces
- Broadly speaking, most police force funding comes from direct Government funding. Nationally, around £3 in every £10 of police force funding comes from the council tax policing precept – a special levy.
- In 2018/19 the Government is protecting the grant it pays to forces in cash terms and has empowered locally elected Police and Crime Commissioners to raise council precept contributions by up to a £1 per month per household.
- Most Police and Crime Commissioners chose to use this flexibility in full in order to meet the demands of their area.
- A full list of funding for police forces in England and Wales for 2018/19 is available at the end of this document.
- The Government forecast in December 2017 that up to £270m of increased funding in 2018/19 will come from increased council tax income. This was based on Office for Budget Responsibility estimates of the growth in the number of households paying Council Tax (the tax base) and an assumption that all PCCs would use their precept flex. This figure has been revised to £280m following the availability of MHCLG actual council tax data that confirms total police council tax income next year and decisions taken by PCCs on whether to use their precept flex.
Counter terrorism policing
- Funding for counter terrorism policing is ring-fenced for this national priority. The budget for 2017/18 was £707 million.
- In 2018/19, the budget will increase by £50 million to £757 million to help deal with the fast-changing and increasingly challenging threat from terrorism. This is new money that was not part of the Spending Review 2015 settlement.
- This follows the £28 million of new money the Government provided to CT policing this year, going to forces across the country to meet costs relating to recent terror attacks.
- In 2015, the Chancellor announced that cross-government spending on counter-terrorism would be increased by 30%. This increased CT spending from £11.7 billion over five years to £15.1 billion over the same period.
National funding
- At a national level, funding is provided for national programmes and priorities. This funding is known as reallocations. In 2018/19, an extra £130 million will be provided for these.
- The increase in funding will largely be spent on police technology and special grants forces need to meet exceptional costs incurred. This year, Special Grant funding includes £9.8 million for Greater Manchester Police after the Manchester Arena attack. Next year, Special Grant funding will include the costs of policing the Commonwealth Summit in London.
Police Transformation Fund
- A crucial reallocation is for the Police Transformation Fund.
- In 2018/19, we are again providing a £175 million Police Transformation Fund.
- This matters because it is extra funding to policing to improve services to the public in the future. Led by the police themselves, the fund enables policing to invest money in reform, transformation and digitisation projects to benefit the whole policing system.
Successful Police Transformation Fund projects currently in progress include:
- An £11 million initiative to pilot Video Enabled Justice in the South East and London, which will help improve access to justice, significantly enhance victim and witness user experience, and save valuable police time;
- Investing £9 million for a nationally co-ordinated response to Modern Slavery, which aims to integrate interdependent functions (nationally coordinated action, assessment, guidance and training) enabling a significant change in the way that Modern Slavery is policed;
- £20 million over three years to invest in undercover online capability to tackle Child Sexual Abuse. Work in the first six months has already led to 181 arrests, preventing serious crimes against children whilst still putting the full capability in place.
Efficiency, productivity and digitisation
- The Home Office believes the police system can improve efficiency and increase productivity, making better use of the money and systems they have. This is a view shared by the independent inspectorate, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and the Fire Service, who has said forces can be more ambitious in this area.
In practice this means:
- Buying items in a smarter way across the police, saving money on everything from cars to uniforms. The Home Office, working with the police, has identified around £120 million of potential savings policing could make in this way.
- Improving productivity, for example, getting more done in the same amount of time. Mobile working is an area where the police could make significant gains, with officers spending extra time on the frontline. In areas which are already taking advantage of mobile working, officers are using phones and tablets (mobile working devices) to access the information they need and make their reports, rather than having to spend their time going to and from police stations. If all forces delivered improvements to mobile working to the same degree as the best forces, this has the potential to free up the equivalent of 11,000 extra officers nationally to improve services.
Police reserves
- Police forces keep money in reserve to cover unexpected costs as well as to invest, e.g. in better technology.
- In March 2017, police forces held usable reserves of over £1.6 billion, compared to £1.4 billion in 2011.
- The amount of money held in reserve varies considerably, from around 6% of Northumbria’s annual funding to 42% in Gwent.
- The Home Office is increasing the transparency around police reserves and has published comparable national data on reserves on gov.uk as well as introducing new guidance for PCCs in a bid to make it easier for the public to access high quality, comparable information.
Police Funding Formula
- The Police Funding Formula divides up how much money each police force receives from the overall central government funds. It takes into account a number of factors to assess demand in each area.
- Earlier this year, the Home Office and police partners engaged on potential changes to the police funding formula. However, in the context of changing demand, the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service Nick Hurd has said that providing funding certainty over the next two years to enable the police to plan in an efficient way is his priority.
- Therefore, proposed changes to the funding formula will be revisited at the next Spending Review.
Police funding (from Government grant and council tax precept) by force for 2018/19
|
PCC |
2017/18 |
2018/19 |
Cash increase |
2017 reserves as percentage of funding** |
2017 HMIC PEEL Efficiency Rating |
|
|
£m |
£m |
£m |
% |
|
||
|
Avon & Somerset |
273.7 |
281.7 |
8.0 |
14% |
Good |
|
|
Bedfordshire |
101.4 |
104.6 |
3.2 |
13% |
Requires Improvement |
|
|
Cambridgeshire |
129.8 |
134.0 |
4.2 |
22% |
Good |
|
|
Cheshire |
172.4 |
177.9 |
5.5 |
12% |
Good |
|
|
City of London |
56.0 |
56.9 |
0.9 |
n/a |
Good |
|
|
Cleveland |
123.2 |
125.4 |
2.3 |
12% |
Good |
|
|
Cumbria |
100.4 |
102.9 |
2.5 |
24% |
Good |
|
|
Derbyshire |
162.7 |
167.2 |
4.6 |
20% |
Good |
|
|
Devon & Cornwall |
282.0 |
291.3 |
9.3 |
21% |
Good |
|
|
Dorset |
120.5 |
124.7 |
4.2 |
11% |
Good |
|
|
Durham |
113.0 |
115.6 |
2.6 |
12% |
Outstanding |
|
|
Dyfed-Powys |
96.6 |
99.1 |
2.5 |
27% |
Requires Improvement |
|
|
Essex |
267.0 |
275.9 |
8.8 |
8% |
Good |
|
|
Gloucestershire |
106.5 |
110.3 |
3.8 |
25% |
Good |
|
|
Greater Manchester |
545.4 |
556.1 |
10.7 |
15% |
n/a*** |
|
|
Gwent |
120.9 |
123.5 |
2.6 |
42% |
Good |
|
|
Hampshire |
304.5 |
314.2 |
9.7 |
28% |
Good |
|
|
Hertfordshire |
182.8 |
188.9 |
6.1 |
23% |
Good |
|
|
Humberside |
171.4 |
175.3 |
4.0 |
20% |
Requires Improvement |
|
|
Kent |
279.3 |
288.8 |
9.5 |
12% |
Good |
|
|
Lancashire |
260.3 |
266.8 |
6.4 |
18% |
Good |
|
|
Leicestershire |
170.5 |
175.5 |
5.0 |
17% |
Requires Improvement |
|
|
Lincolnshire |
110.6 |
113.9 |
3.3 |
17% |
Requires Improvement |
|
|
Merseyside |
307.5 |
312.6 |
5.1 |
10% |
Good |
|
|
Metrpolitan Police (GLA) |
2510.8 |
2560.1 |
49.3 |
10% |
Requires Improvement |
|
|
Norfolk |
148.9 |
153.6 |
4.7 |
17% |
Good |
|
|
North Wales |
143.2 |
146.5 |
3.3 |
24% |
Requires Improvement |
|
|
North Yorkshire |
140.7 |
144.8 |
4.1 |
12% |
Requires Improvement |
|
|
Northamptonshire |
122.0 |
126.0 |
4.0 |
8% |
Good |
|
|
Northumbria |
260.1 |
265.3 |
5.2 |
7% |
Good |
|
|
Nottinghamshire |
190.5 |
195.1 |
4.6 |
10% |
Requires Improvement |
|
|
South Wales |
262.8 |
271.0 |
8.2 |
12% |
Good |
|
|
South Yorkshire |
240.7 |
245.8 |
5.0 |
19% |
Requires Improvement |
|
|
Staffordshire |
177.7 |
182.7 |
4.9 |
7% |
Good |
|
|
Suffolk |
112.7 |
116.2 |
3.5 |
10% |
Good |
|
|
Surrey |
210.2 |
217.0 |
6.9 |
7% |
Good |
|
|
Sussex |
256.0 |
264.9 |
8.9 |
24% |
Good |
|
|
Thames Valley |
376.9 |
389.7 |
12.8 |
14% |
Outstanding |
|
|
Warwickshire |
90.8 |
94.1 |
3.3 |
29% |
Good |
|
|
West Mercia |
201.2 |
205.8 |
4.6 |
26% |
Good |
|
|
West Midlands |
524.4 |
534.3 |
9.9 |
20% |
Good |
|
|
West Yorkshire |
408.3 |
418.1 |
9.9 |
22% |
Good |
|
|
Wiltshire |
105.0 |
109.2 |
4.1 |
19% |
Good |
|
|
Total England & Wales |
11,041.6 |
11,323.4 |
281.8 |
15% |
|
* Total direct resource funding consists of core grant funding, NICC grants, Legacy Council Tax Grants, Precept Grant and police precept.
** Usable resource reserves as recorded in March 2017 audited statements of accounts as a percentage of 2017/18 direct resource funding. Greater Manchester reserves are as at 7 May 2017.
*** Greater Manchester did not receive an Efficiency rating in 2017. The rating they received in 2016 was Good.