No further cuts to police budgets

Did you see this coming?  I didn’t, but am relieved that the government have seen sense.

Clearly the Chancellor and the Home Secretary must have known about this long before the announcement was made in yesterday’s Autumn statement and if they had shared that good news sooner it would have saved an awful lot of worry and concern.  Chief Constables, PCCs and the Police Federation have had some of their time completely wasted by this government’s impending budget doom – and doom it would have been had the cuts gone ahead.

Politicians love playing their little games, keeping us all on tenterhooks until the very last minute and so whilst I’m happy that there will be no further cuts to the police budgets this parliament (and I’ll wait for the fullness of time before I believe it) my opinion of politicians remains the same.

And remember too that police services are still dealing with the last round of budget cuts and because local authorities are strapped for cash the police are having to take up the slack – like they always do. This will result in huge pressures on the police service over the foreseeable future, so don’t for one moment think that all is rosy in the garden.

This is what the Police Federation are saying:

Steve White, chair, Police Federation of England and Wales, said: ‘We welcome that sense has finally prevailed and that the chancellor has announced there will be no further cuts to police budgets over this Parliament.

'Communities around the country will be breathing a sigh of relief that things are not going to get drastically worse as had been threatened. However, we will need to look closely at the detail to see what it will actually mean for forces.

‘Clearly, the government has recognised the value that our members bring to the communities they serve. To have cut the police further at this time would have been utter madness. I have my doubts that this would have ever happened had we at the Police Federation not been the only police organisation prepared to consistently raise the dangers and threats.

‘This is clearly good news but it doesn’t mean that the problems we have been highlighting in recent years have miraculously vanished overnight. Officers are still hugely under pressure and many forces still have the final tranche of savings from the last set of cuts to find.

'It is therefore imperative the government urgently revisits the outdated and antiquated 43-force structure which hamstrings the ability of the service to properly modernise, and I will be raising this issue directly with the Home Secretary this afternoon.’ 

Source Police Federation http://www.polfed.org/newsroom/3033.aspx