MORE POLICE – AT A PRICE...
Chief constable says she need £15 a year extra fron council tax payers to 'take the fight to the criminals'
CHIEF constable Olivia Pinkney is seeking a larger share of council tax to boost police numbers.
The police chief, pictured, is today making a case for taxpayers to contribute around £15 a year extra to the force in council tax, saying it would give them a chance to ‘take the fight to criminals’.
THE county’s chief constable has said Portsmouth will ‘absolutely’ see more police if her bid for £10m in extra cash from the public comes good.
Olivia Pinkney, who has led Hampshire Constabulary for nearly five years, is today making a case for taxpayers to contribute around £15 a year extra to police in council tax.
Mrs Pinkney has said the levy means that recruiting and training 146 officers in 2021/22 — including seven in the regional organised crime unit — would not come at the cost of cutting any of the force’s 228 PCSOs.
Funding for those officers was due as part of the second phase of Home Office’s uplift programme, but the extra money would also mean another 50 could be recruited early from the third phase. Another 16 are being brought in to tackle organised crime.
In taking the unusual step and outlining publicly her recommendation, Mrs Pinkney has said bolstering the force will give them the capability to ‘arrest an extra 300’ of the most dangerous criminals operating county lines drugs gangs.
She said it would give the force the potential to investigate 26,000 more crimes - signalling a return to more probing of ‘neighbourhood crime’ that past austeritydriven cutbacks had hindered.
Prevention work could cut 1,000 crimes a year, and the cash could help safeguard 12,000 vulnerable people, including 240 more high-risk children, she says.
Cash would be pumped into making sure the police can stay on top of the courts backlog - some 200 crown court trials and 2,500 magistrates cases. Mrs Pinkney said this needed significant resourcing.
Asked if the cash boost would see more officers in Portsmouth, Mrs Pinkney told The News: ‘Absolutely.’
Officers being funded by the Home Office 20,000 nationwide uplift are already in the city, and Mrs Pinkney was on patrol with them in December.
‘They’re coming through and they’re keeping Portsmouth safer,’ she said - and added local teams are ‘a really important part of the jigsaw’.
This boost would see police ‘ramp up’ the pressure on drug dealers bringing misery to Portsmouth, Mrs Pinkney said. She added: ‘I’ve been a chief officer for a long old time and this opportunity to ramp up, and take the fight to the criminals is something I’ve not been able to do at this level before.’
But it would also allow her teams to once again look at neighbourhood crime in a way that has not been possible for years.
‘I want to investigate more neighbourhood crime,’ she said. ‘We’ve always investigated the most high harm and the most serious and we always will. But I know there’s been a gap around what people would like me to investigate and what I could do - this will help close that gap. It won’t eliminate it, but it will help close it.’
Funding for Hampshire Constabulary comes from a Home Office grant, and the police share of council tax.
The grant is worked out using a much-maligned funding formula, taking into account factors including population size and number of licensed premises.
Inspectors at the police watchdog say that formula leaves Hampshire underfunded by about £43.5m compared to other forces.
The Home Office has said funding for Hampshire is set to increase by £21m in 2021/22, bringing total funding up to £387m for the year. This however includes the £15 a year - for a band D property council tax precept increase.
Now for the first time, Mrs Pinkney has handed police and crime commissioner Michael Lane an operational recommendation as he sets out his budget plan.
In that recommendation, Mrs Pinkney is backing a £15 precept rise and said she is doing so in the ‘face of a
Anything other than a £15 per year increase flies in the face of what we need. Olivia Pinkney, Hampshire chief constable
growth in serious violence and uncertainty’.
Mr Lane, an elected politician, must take his proposals to the Hampshire Police and Crime Panel where councillors from the county’s cities and boroughs will vote on them.
Mrs Pinkney told The News she knew ‘people are worried economically’ in the pandemic but that she was ‘struck’ by support. A survey found 66.1 per cent of the 8,348 participants backed the increase - but that increased to 71.48 per cent in Portsmouth. Extra funding will bring in new officers sooner, Mrs Pinkney said.
‘The sooner we’ve got them in the sooner they can be out and about helping the people of Portsmouth be safer.’
She added: ‘Anything other than a £15 per year increase flies in the face of the operational evidence of what we need to deliver safer communities.’