Local police faces ‘massive’ budget challenge

 

Dyfed-Powys Police has reacted with concern following the announcement that it faces drastic budget cuts and warns jobs could go.

 

The force faces a reduction of £7.012 million or 11.5% in revenue over the next two years and its chief says that rural policing will suffer as a result.

 

Below, mywelshpool carries the full statement from the Chair of the Police Authority, Delyth Humfryes:

 

“Today’s provisional budget settlement will mean that DPPA faces cash reductions of £7.012 million or 11.5% in revenue over the next two years. Cuts of this magnitude will inevitably alter the way in which policing services are delivered in future.

 

The announcement means that the police service in Wales has done significantly worse in terms of spending cuts than our public sector partners. We need to make cash cuts of 5.1% next year compared to an average of 1.4% for our partners in local government.

 

It appears from initial analysis of the announcement that the rural policing fund has been rolled into the general police formula and re-allocated based on crimes and incidents. This has a massive implication for Dyfed Powys Police for the future and this decision does not acknowledge the additional pressures involved in policing a large rural area.

 

The savings target is enormously challenging and will inevitably mean there will have to be a greater focus on threat to life issues and core policing rather than some of the other things which the Force have been able to do in the past. Taken together the cuts are likely to result in job losses of between 250 and 350 and this scale of budget reduction cannot be delivered without a significant reduction in the number of police officers employed.

 

Despite our best endeavours as an Authority, today’s announcement means that there will inevitably be further job losses (we have already taken over 70 posts out of our establishment) and we cannot rule out the possibility of redundancies.”