Lincolnshire Police & Crime Commissioner (PCC) Marc Jones believes that an additional £15 million per year in central government funding is necessary to ensure Lincolnshire Police is sustainable.
Mr Jones, who was re-elected for his third term in May, has repeatedly highlighted how the force is one of the worst funded in the country per resident.
He recently threatened legal action against the Home Office to introduce a new funding formula for police forces in England and Wales.
Mr Jones argues that the current funding formula uses old population statistics from 2013 and outdated metrics like pubs per square mile.
“It’s been a constant theme of Lincolnshire Police that when we’re putting together the medium-term financial plans, there is usually an element of the budget that we have to fill with spending reserves, and that continues to be the case,” Mr Jones explained following a Police & Crime Panel meeting at Lincolnshire County Council on Friday. “At the moment, we are filling the gap in reserves by around £7.5 million, but what we do tend to be very successful at is bidding for additional funding yearly, which quite often means we don’t have to spend most of the reserves that we expected we might, so the reserves are still available to fill a gap later on.”
He continued: “The only other way I can fill that gap is by reducing the service, and obviously we’ve not needed to do that. We continue to battle to maintain the service we’ve got.”
He said a seven per cent pay increase and increasing employer contributions to pensions, have created an estimated £4m gap in his budget.
“It’s great that they do them, but we do need to make sure these things are fully funded when they do, because when they don’t, it just means we have to have fewer people,” he said.
He believes an additional £10 million would help them “deal with the worst of the issues” they’re facing, while an additional £15 million would make the force sustainable. “Believe me, we could spend as much as they could provide us with, but nevertheless, at the moment we have 155 officers per 100,000 population, against 191 in the average.
“If they brought us up to the average, that would be great – that would give us an extra 300-400 people to police the county. But, I’m realistic.
“If they were to give us £10 million to £15 million per year, which sounds a lot, but it’s about the equivalent to what it costs to police the Notting Hill Carnival every year for one weekend, we would be able to be a sustainable force, delivering the things we need to keep the public safe.”
