Leicestershire and Rutland Chief Constable says police staff must be reduced by 8% to bridge £5.8m gap in budget deficit
Rob Nixon, the Chief Constable of Leicestershire Police, which covers Rutland, has said that police staff must be reduced by 8% in order to bridge the £5.8 million budget deficit.
Mr Nixon, speaking to members of the Police and Crime Panel at their meeting (1 February), said that he is: "…very concerned about the gap of £5.8 million in the budget deficit for 2023/24, and how we are going to bridge that gap. Legally, Police and Crime Commissioner Rupert Matthews has to produce a balanced budget for the coming year, so this is not an option we can avoid."
The chief constable went on to explain: "We will maintain the numbers of police officers at 2,242 but we're going to need to significantly reduce the numbers of police staff by 8%. That is not going to be an easy task – you will already see that we have 'salami-sliced' police staff many times over the years, with a misconception among many about what police staff actually do. In a modern police service they do equally what police officers do, and in some cases, more."
"Initially, reductions will be made through vacancy management and natural attrition – so we are going to manage those with real care and compassion. The challenge we face – and I share this openly – is that not all the vacancies we have at the moment are in the right place. Some we're going to have to recruit internally and some we're going to need to focus on productivity and output to see if we can identify the right people."
The chief constable listed eight items that were proposed to members of the panel as measures to reduce the budget deficit, including estimates of fuel and inflation costs coming down over time, and the reduction of some of the level of investment earmarked for 'progressive projects', such as updated forensics software associated with telecommunications.
In addition, a £620,000 contribution will come from the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner "…to allow us the breathing time over the next twelve months to maintain our staff numbers as we modernise."
Mr Nixon, added. "We need to find ways to reduce this budget gap that has been imposed unexpectedly upon us by central government, who have not fully funded the pay increases for this year."
In summary he said: "We have to make sure that in bridging this gap we don't inadvertently just take staff out without managing the demand and re-engineering in a quite scientific way what they do. While I do support the £15 per band D household precept increase that the PCC has proposed, I put it on record that the £15 is still significantly short of what is needed, and that this over-reliance on central grant versus precept, brings huge inequalities to forces up and down the country."
The next meeting of the Police and Crime panel will take place on 6 March 2023.
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