PAYING FOR THE POLICE
This year, GMP funding increased by £10.6m due to a rise in the precept for policing in council tax bills across the region.
The extra cash will be used to fund another 50 officers this year, who have already been recruited, and a further 50 next year.
It’s the first staffing increase since 2010 - but only equates to an extra five officers in each of Greater Manchester’s ten boroughs.
“It will be a real increase,” Deputy Chief Constable Ian Pilling insists. “If you compare that with the fact that we have lost 2,000, it’s not going to have a massive impact. But let’s be fair, it is an increase the first in eight years. There have been decreases up until now, so I am not going to complain about it.”
The government says that it gave local authorities the power to increase the precept.
But Greater Manchester’s deputy mayor for policing and crime Bev Hughes said ministers have simply passed the problem to Greater Manchester leaders and taxpayers, and that local people are feeling the effects of a force ‘cut to the bone’.
“Whilst ministers remain ignorant to the impact of its austerity agenda, it is local people who are bearing the brunt,” she said.
The government, which provides a large chunk of GMP’s funding, has suggested that GMP should dip into its £75million of reserves to fund further officers.
But the region’s chiefs insist that raiding the reserves - half of which must be kept for PFI, insurance and general reserves - is not a sustainable, long-term solution.
“Our usable reserves, over and above essential contingencies, amount to less than six per cent of our annual budget and are below the national average. Reserves are, of course, a one-off and once spent are gone – they cannot, by definition, be used to sustain annual salary costs”, Ms Hughes told us.