Beds Police to axe 60 officer jobs

Also being cut are 14.5 police staff posts, bringing a total of £5.9 million in savings.

The force is facing a funding gap of £6.3 million in the 2011/12 financial year, and is now looking at ways it can save the remaining £400,000.

A report on the cuts says the “difficult decisions” the force is having to make in light of its budget decrease “could impact on performance and public confidence”.

But a spokesman for the Bedfordshire Police Authority, which monitors the budget and sets priorities and targets, said the force’s top priority was to “maintain the services that matter most to local people”.

Collaboration with neighbouring forces in Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire, cutting unnecessary expenditure and an ‘efficiency’ programme are all also being used to cut spending.

Reductions in funding mean the Beds Police has to cut spending by £19 million over the next four years, partly due to its government grant being cut by five per cent.

The force is currently advertising for a deputy chief constable, a job that comes with a salary of £109,782, a relocation allowance of £47,000, a car allowance of £8,000 and a housing/rent allowance of up to £5,270.

South Weds Beds Conservative MP Andrew Selous said he was sad to see police officers losing their jobs but said spending was increasing elsewhere.

“Spending on the health service and schools has gone up and that does mean other areas will have to face cutbacks if we’re going to deal with the deficit,” he said.

“I’m not sure how many of the jobs being cut are officers on the beat and how many are officers working in other areas such as IT. I would be keen to see sacrifices being made from back office jobs rather than the front line.”

Mr Selous said he was concerned at the high salaries being paid to non-officer staff, saying a member of the force’s media staff was being paid “more than the Prime Minister”.

“Bedfordshire Police have known this was coming for some time and I would expect them to be making as many efficiencies as possible,” he said.

Changes on the way at as part of the efficiency programme include changing the current two Luton and county ‘divisions’ to three ‘local policing districts’ for Luton, Bedford and Central Bedfordshire. The two current divisional commanders will become Chief Superintendents, with one responsible for delivery of local policing and the other responsible for tackling crime.

More matters will be dealt with over the telephone to reduce the demand on officer time, incident reponse teams that currently cover individual types of crime will be turned into one county-wide response team, and more support staff will be used in ‘crime management’.

No decisions had yet been made as to which departments the cuts to police staff would be made in, the police authority spokesman said.