£10 a year tax rise to help fund Bedfordshire Police approved

"Your unanimous vote for this proposal will save lives," said the PCC
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The Bedfordshire Police and Crime Panel has voted to support the proposed £10 (Band D) policing precept rise, but it wants improved clarity on savings and efficiencies made by the county's police force.

At a meeting of the panel last night (Tuesday, February 1) the police and crime commissioner, Festus Akinbusoye, said agreeing to the rise would "save lives".

The Panel's chair, councillor Ian Dalgarno, told the members that there were three options when deciding on the police and crime commissioner's proposal to increase the precept for 2022/23.

Police and crime commissioner, Festus AkinbusoyePolice and crime commissioner, Festus Akinbusoye
Police and crime commissioner, Festus Akinbusoye

It could reject it, but it would have to explain why. This would have also required a unanimous vote from all nine of the panel members who attended the meeting last night (Tuesday, February 1).

The other options were to approve it as laid out or approve it with recommendations.

In introducing the proposed increase, the PCC reminded the panel that the policing formula classifies Bedfordshire Police as a rural force, while having police demands "akin to that in much larger urban and metropolitan cities".

"I want to broadly set out the basis for this £10 per annum per Band D council tax precept increase for our police force," he said.

"This is a proposal that is focussed on tackling crime in both our urban and our rural areas, supporting victims of crime, and improving standards in policing.

"These were among the pledges that I made to the people of Bedfordshire before I was elected as police and crime commissioner last May, and it is what I am absolutely determined to deliver," he said.

"Based on the analysis of crime trends and the criminality in our county there is absolutely no doubt whatever in my mind that the force requires additional investments so that more criminals can be taken off our streets and put before the courts.

"I want to reassure the panel, and indeed the public, that the use of taxpayers' money is one that I take very seriously.

"For me as a police and crime commissioner, I do not plan to make this an annual blank cheque to Bedfordshire Police.

"The chief constable is very clear as to what the public expect for this cash investment into the police force.

"They want to see more visible and proactive policing in both urban and rural areas to cut crime. they want to see a strong crackdown on organised crime gangs and improvement in emergency call handling. They want us to better support victims of crime and to improve standards in policing.

"So your unanimous vote for an 84 pence precept increase per month will help to deliver on these policing priorities in Bedfordshire.

"Your unanimous vote for this proposal will save lives," he said.

Mr Damian Warburton, a panel member, said: "I am sceptical over some of what I've heard tonight, I listened very closely to what you said.

"I found it to be very emotive, I found it to be borderline inaccurate, and I don't think that was deliberate, I think that it was unfortunate.

"Taking dangerous criminals off the street is always a great line to go from, well the truth is it's not the police that dangerous criminals off the streets, it's the courts.

"And convictions do not always result imprisonment, and nor should they.

"The police, of course, have a very important role to play in affecting the ability of the courts to do their work, but the simple increase in funding is not necessarily going to guarantee the results that you are quite emotively pushing us towards," he said.

The PCC said: "Courts don't arrest criminals, police officers do. We need to recruit more police officers to get the baddies to the courts to put them away, should the court decide to do so."

Mr Warburton said he was also "disappointed" that there was little mention of efficiencies.

"All I heard was this is what we can do if we spend more," he said.

"There's no reason why doing more with less cannot be a frame of mind that is never the less adopted for the sake of not being wasteful.

"Of course the force needs a huge amount of money in order to do a huge job, but that doesn't mean to say that it should be a bottomless money pit.

"I want to hear more about the efficiencies, so that I can be confident that it's not simply a case of give us more give us more give us more," he said.

Gavin Chambers, chief finance officer at the Office of the PCC, replied that £600,000 worth of savings and efficiencies have been built into the budget for next year.

The PCC said that he asked about efficiencies during pre-budget discussions.

"I said show me the efficiencies, because like I said in my opening statement, I do not plan to be giving this an annual more and more money [plea]," he said.

"Unless people of Bedfordshire see what they get in return for it, I just will not do it.

"We want to see outcomes, we want to see the benefits for this investment and you're more than welcome to hold me accountable for that.

"But I have to say though over the last ten years Bedfordshire Police has stripped out a lot of inefficiencies and a lot of savings had to be made in tens of millions of pounds during the austerity years and it continues to do so.

"At the moment you can't take much more meat off this bone and we just need to be very mindful of that.

"As a police force we are so far stretched in terms of the resources and the only way we're going to start making more and more savings is looking at the back room support that police officers need.

"I understand the importance for efficiencies, we've got some in this budget, but I just don't know if there is a lot more that we can keep taking out every year before we start affecting the quality of policing in Bedfordshire," he said.

The panel voted unanimously to support the precept increase, but with three recommendations.

The first was that the panel would write to the policing minister and the Home Office to support the proposal for increasing the grant that's made by the government to Bedfordshire Police.

The second was for Bedfordshire three councils to also support, via motions, improved grant funding for Bedfordshire Police.

The third was to receive more clarity on savings and efficiencies.