Savings following announcement of Police Funding Settlement

Following the announcement of the Police Funding Settlement for 2025/2026, we have got to make approximately £9 million of savings in the next financial year, even if the Police and Crime Commissioner increases precept to the maximum available level on 10 February.

The settlement, including precept, provides little more than the funding required to cover the additional costs of last year’s police pay award and increased National Insurance contributions. We will be required to make cuts in staffing to fund other significant inflationary cost pressures. There is a challenge locally, which impacts on policing legitimacy, to the Home Office assumption that significantly above inflation increases in precept are used to fund pressures imposed centrally on policing.

These include:

• Overtime and allowances which are treated by the Home Office as a discretionary spend area and therefore doesn’t fund additional costs due to the pay award and National Insurance increases
• Reliance on assumed precept rises as part of the settlement which includes an assumption of council tax base increases, which results in differentials across the country
• Council tax base growth has not been as strong locally compared to previous years, with an average increase of one per cent for 2025/26 compared to an assumption of 1.5 per cent
• In addition to the above, there are considerable deficits on collection funds, the reasons for which are complex and multifaceted but do include local discretion regarding council tax support schemes and failure to recover bad debts. Neither of which are within the force’s control
• Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee funding is £1.5m for Staffordshire. However, the grant conditions have not been confirmed, making it difficult to plan
• The settlement doesn’t include money for new pressures such as the changes to the Dangerous Dogs Act for XL bully dogs, which have been nationally mandated
• Home Office IT charges continue to rise. For 2025/26 the increase is 18 per cent
• The College of Policing continue to set requirements for training with increasing costs. College fees have been increased by 5.9 per cent and new burdens imposed without funding.

We are working at pace to address these challenges but ultimately difficult decisions will have to be made, particularly around police staff as police officer numbers are ring fenced with numbers set by government. Some officers may have to backfill police staff posts as we seek to make the necessary savings.

I will do everything I can to minimise the impact on frontline services but I cannot guarantee this.

We are making strong progress on our journey to become an outstanding local police service once again. Our commitment to our communities remains the same but we need to be realistic that our service delivery will be impacted if we’re not funded correctly.