South Yorkshire crime commissioner faces taxing dilemma

Dr Alan Billings is considering increase the police precept in the county by three per cent, the equivalent of £5 a year for a Band D home, to avoid having to repeat the redundancies made by the force last year.

The police and crime commissioner, who is responsible for setting the force’s £240m-a-year budget, says not doing so would risk him not being able to access vital Special Grant funding from the Government.

South Yorkshire Police has in the last three years been forced to make a number of such requests to cover the costs of ‘legacy issues’ such as Hillsborough inquest legal fees and the new probe into Rotherham sex abuse.

In a statement on his website, Dr Billings said police forces were told by the Government just before Christmas that their yearly budgets would only stay the same as last year if they increased council tax by the maximum amount allowed.

He said: “Although this is a decision for each Police and Crime Commissioner to make, after consultation, the implication of the announcement was clear: if you don’t put the precept up, you cannot expect any additional help during the year.

“In the case of South Yorkshire, this could be quite serious since we have had to ask for Special Grant help several times this past year – for such items as the cost of the Hillsborough inquests.”

South Yorkshire Police has had to ask the Government for financial help several times in recent years in the face of extra pressures on its finances as it bids to balance the books.

Its legal bill for the new Hillsborough inquests, including representation for retired officers and Chief Constable David Crompton, came to £25.1m, with the the Home Office paying for £20.4m of the total.

Operation Stovewood, an investigation by the National Crime Agency into historic sex abuse in Rotherham, is expected to cost more than £30m over eight years, though the force is applying for help from the Government to pay for this.

The Home Office has also handed out more than £1m to the force to pay for officers to travel to Kos to investigate the case of Sheffield boy Ben Needham, who went missing on the island in 1991.

The force said in 2016 that it had made revenue savings equivalent to £74m a year in the past eight years. It has cut hundreds of officers’ position over the same period.

Police and crime commissioners around the country are currently setting their budgets, which will be subject to approval by local police and crime panels.

In West Yorkshire, police and crime commissioner Mark Burns-Williamson this month launched a survey to get residents’ views on a possible precept increase “to offset the cut from government and continue the re-building of police”.

North Yorkshire’s Julia Mulligan is also asking the views of people in the county as to whether the precept should be frozen, raised by 1.99 per cent, or by more than 1.99 per cent, which would force her to hold a costly referendum.

In his online statement, Dr Billings said that even raising the precept by the maximum amount would keep his budget the same as last year but would not take inflation into account.

He said: “So, if the money stays the same, but the costs of running the police service are going up, savings have to be found if the budget is to balance.

“Last year many of those savings came from redundancies. This is not a road we want to go down again and I will be working hard with the Chief Constable to ensure this does not happen. But it does mean that every department has to think about how it can be more efficient.”

He said that before setting the precept he would getting the views of residents through opinion polling and meeting people at community centres.