Budget cutting Lincolnshire Police has received a big boost with additional funding of £1.8m allowing it to recruit 30 more officers.
Lincolnshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner Marc Jones successfully applied to the Home Office for the additional cash and will make it available to the Chief Constable to spend this year and next.
Back in February Lincolnshire Police announced that 40 “core police officers” who resign and retire would not be replaced as part of £3.2m worth of cutbacks.
At that time around 100 roles were expected to be lost, including 70 from “front line” staff.
The number of PCSOs in Lincolnshire was also expected to fall from 118 to 85 as part of the cutbacks to be implemented this financial year.
Speaking on the additional funding, Deputy Chief Constable Craig Naylor, said: “Officer numbers vary throughout the year due to resignations and retirements so we cannot give a precise current figure.
“However, this announcement means that the Chief Constable will be able to recruit, later this year, 30 more officers.
This had not been planned for in our original budget and is a welcome boost to our numbers.
“In addition, 19 PCSOs are in the process of converting to becoming full PCs.
“Funding to the Police and Crime Commissioner from the Home Office also means that we will be able to retain more PCSOs than the 85 included in our plans.”
The extra money will be used to support a number of new initiatives including the recruitment of 30 new officers in the autumn and a greater than anticipated number of PCSOs.
Other spending plans include boosting the digital forensics unit by two extra posts to support the frontline with ever more complex investigations and strengthening the ARC team by four posts to work with prolific offenders to prevent their reoffending.
Further investments will be made to enhance our ability to protect children and vulnerable adults, and the ongoing Wellbeing programme to ensure police officers are able to provide the best quality of service to the public of Lincolnshire.
The £1.8m extra funding has been bolstered by additional Council Tax receipts of £400,000 – and with some £370,000 added from the carefully managed but dwindling reserves – means an extra £2.57m can be pumped into the policing budget this year.
This means the total budget available for policing and victims services has grown from £117m in 2016/17 to £128m this year – a 9.4 per cent increase over the last three years.
John Hayes, MP for South Holland and the Deepings, said: “While this is good news, it doesn’t replace the requirement for a fundamental change in the funding formula.
“The challenge to change the formula is still there and is something we will pursue as before.”
