Planned reforms of how police forces are funded would give Lincolnshire a better deal and reward those areas already providing good value for money.
Lincolnshire Chief Constable Neil Rhodes and the county’s police and crime commissioner Alan Hardwick have responded to a formal consultation on the new plans, which could see millions of extra pounds in their budget in future years.
Their response to the consultation calls on the Government to push on with its plans for reform, saying they will “deliver a fairer, moretransparent and sustainable model that will ensure better outcomes for the public”.
And they said they “strongly agree” with the Government’s principles of a good funding model – that it should be robust, stable, transparent, incentivising and future-proof, adding: “It is therefore essential that any new model does not, as the current model does, reward those forces that fail to deliver affordable policing and penalise those that have pursued transformation to deliver value for money.”
Lincolnshire Police has been at the forefront of the drive for a fairer funding formula, after Mr Rhodes and Mr Hardwick warned that the county’s force was “on the edge of viability” because of cuts to its budget.
It has also led the way in making money-saving efficiencies, including outsourcing many back office operations to G4S and collaborating with other forces.
In the consultation, the two men reiterated that despite this collaboration they would not want to see the country’s 43 police forces merged to save money.
They said: “It [the funding formula reform] must therefore recognise the legitimate costs of running 43 distinct organisations.
“That is not a licence for inefficiency or ineffectiveness and indeed as part of one of the most advanced regional collaborations in the country, we would never advocate that localism means isolationism.
“Collaboration should and does deliver greater efficiency and operational effectiveness.
“However, a model that supports 43 forces must recognise the cost of being in business at a local level, once other options such as collaboration and outsourcing have been optimised as they have been in Lincolnshire.”
And they called on the Government to look again at the way funds are raised locally for police forces, by giving the police and crime commissioners more powers to raise the council tax precept without calling for a public referendum.
They hope the new funding formula could be in place to benefit Lincolnshire in 2016/17.
