Commissioner's budget proposal approved

A meeting of the Police and Crime Panel has today (Thursday 29 January) approved plans from Leicestershire Police and Crime Commissioner Sir Clive Loader to increase the 2015-16 precept by 1.99%.

Earlier this month, Sir Clive unveiled his proposals to help enhance community safety and protect the most vulnerable in society by increasing the amount of council tax the public pay towards policing.

This equates to an increase of less than 7p a week (or £3.51 a year) for a Band D property but will generate an additional £1.038m to fund policing costs.

A report was presented to the Police and Crime Panel today and the approved increase will enable Sir Clive to build a sustainable base budget that will maintain and safeguard policing services across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland where possible in the future.

In addition, he announced that he has earmarked up to an additional £2m – to be funded from reserves – to be spent on safeguarding children and vulnerable adults.

Last month, the Force was told its funding settlement from the Government would be cut by a further £5.7m (4.7%) in 2015/16 to a total of £114.5m – this is £1m more than was previously indicated in the Comprehensive Spending Review announced in the Chancellor’s 2013 Autumn Statement and is compounded by a process of ‘top slicing’ to fund national policing initiatives.

Additionally, the Force loses out to a further £5.6m annually as a result of the way the funding formula is applied to produce a blanket 5.1% reduction in cash across all Forces.

Sir Clive said: “The Force continues to face considerable service pressures and increasing demands that arise out of new areas of criminality and vulnerability. This precept will not eliminate the need to make difficult decisions on where we allocate our resources, but it will give us some temporary stability to help us address future risks.”

The total budget for 2015/16 is £171.573m. However, Sir Clive has earmarked £2m from budget reserves to invest in proactive work with partners to address priority issues including victims, Child Sex Exploitation (CSE), cyber-crime, mental health and key emerging risks from joint work.

Source:: Leicestershire Police News