Police Funding Tory Style

Last updated on July 25th, 2023 at 02:12 pm

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I freely admit that I’m a bit daft when it comes to economics beyond my home environment, but I have taken more than a passing interest in Police Funding.

As I understand it , it goes something like this

  1. Tories under David Camoron and the delightful Theresa May savagely cut Police Budgets.
  1. Since 2010 more than 21,000 Police Officers have been culled, not to mention Police Staff and PCSOs.

Those oh so generous Tories announced that there is extra funding available to reinstate dwindling Police Officers but ‘Extra’ funding can be made available by PCCs increasing the Policing Precept.

This is where naive, dumb old me gets vexed.

I have no objection, in principle, to paying a little bit more Council Tax to pay for more Police Officers. However my objections to the Tories’ suggestion are

  1. I suspect that it would take a LARGE increase in Council Tax precept to fully restore the 21,000 posts culled by the government, and rebuild or buy new Police Stations, vehicles etc to make the Service efficient again.
  1. When the government got rid of 21,000 officers, Police Forces were forced to sell off approx 650 Police Stations (or at least close their public-facing front counters etc) and other miscellaneous buildings, Police Forces found themselves unable to respond to quite serious crimes in a timely fashion, were we given a reduction in our Council Tax because we were paying for less? I must have missed that.

In short I feel that we are being had over. Mainly Conservative Police and Crime Commissioners are blindly following Cruella’s diktats, cutting resources to the bone then telling us we can have some of it back again but we’ll have to pay for it. WE’RE ALREADY PAYING FOR IT.

Yes I do want to see more Police Officers back on our streets, but the politicians and PCCs need to be honest with us and either ask us if we’re prepared to restore the Police Service to its original status, or stop rolling over and agreeing to everything Cruella dictates. This is what happens when you inject Party Politics into Policing.

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