Spending review leaves Government’s Safer Streets Mission in tatters

I am hugely disappointed by today’s Comprehensive Spending Review. It risks damaging the effectiveness of policing across the country.

The Treasury has only managed to claim a real terms increase in police funding by comparing their figures to 2023 budgets and ignoring the Consumer Price Index (CPI) measure of inflation. Once the expected police pay rise is taken into account this is likely to be a real terms cut in funding for police forces such as Thames Valley.

Today’s announcement leaves the Government’s Safer Streets Mission in tatters. I support the ambition to deliver more neighbourhood police officers – in Thames Valley we had already doubled the number of frontline officers in neighbourhood policing roles before the government came into office. Yet it is clear that with cuts to policing budgets and the government’s determination to max out the bill for local council tax payers, there will simply be no way the Government can deliver on their promises.

The impact on the Ministry of Justice means that we will continue to see problems in our courts and prison for many years to come, heaping more pressure on police forces and risking damage to public confidence.

In Thames Valley we have already saved around £20 million in the last two years, with more savings already required. It is time that the Home Office looked at some of the practical ways they can remove costs from the system by reducing bureaucracy and freeing up more resources to fight crime. I am extremely concerned about the implications of this funding settlement. In recent years we’ve seen record numbers of police officers, arrests are up and crime is falling. This settlement risks putting those achievements into reverse.