Rural police forces could lose out in funding shake-up, warns Yorkshire crime tsar

North Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner Julia Mulligan says the approach to funding favoured by the Government is like “allocating NHS money on the basis of the number of people in an area with a cough and cold”.

The Home Office is currently reviewing how it hands out funds to the nation’s 43 police forces after delaying its previous plans to change the criteria last November.

Police Minister Mike Penning admitted at the time that an error had been made in calculating the proposed formula, prompting a “great deal of concern” from forces.

According to a study published today by the National Rural Crime Network, the work to date “appears to be inherently unfair on rural forces, particularly those with sparse populations”.

The report said rural police forces often had to plug the gap left by other services such as health and social care, whose services can be stretched in isolated areas, and cope with longer distances to attend incidents.

It added that rural forces, particularly those with coastal areas and tourist attractions such as national parks, experience larger seasonal variations in demand due to the large number of visiting holiday-makers.

Mrs Mulligan, who chairs the NCRN, said the Government appears to favour using the number of crimes recorded in an area as the main basis for allocating money, meaning areas with high levels of volume crimes like shoplifting would benefit disproportionately.

The network, who commissioned Plymouth University academics to carry out a study on the issue, says these crimes do not accurately reflect the demands on rural police forces like North Yorkshire’s.

Mrs Mulligan said: “The focus put on counting reported crime skews funding towards areas with high volumes of theft. As a consequence rural forces with fewer such crimes will miss out.

“It’s like allocating NHS money on the basis of the number of people in an area with a cough and cold.

“The more people, the more coughs and colds, but in no way does this take into account the complexity of serving the public properly. It’s a crude way of looking at a complex issue and is clearly going to throw up an unfair result.”

Prior to last year’s Autumn statement by Chancellor George Osborne, police forces expected cuts to their funding of up to 40 per cent, but received a better-than-expected settlement.

Mrs Mulligan said this settlement was now in question in the aftermath of the UK’s Brexit vote, as the uncertainty caused will reduce the amount of money going into Treasury coffers.

She said: “It’s therefore more important than ever to put our case forwards. Along with other Police and Crime Commissioners from rural areas, I will be using this report to do exactly that.”

Last year, Mrs Mulligan joined other PCCs in writing to Policing Minister Mike Penning in protest at the “flawed” changes to the way funding is calculated, claiming they were unfair to rural forces.

Had the proposed changes been brought in, they would have led to North Yorkshire and several other forces losing millions of pounds a year from their budget.

Though the reforms were delayed, they were expected be re-introduced in some form within a year.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Police reform is working and crime has fallen by more than a quarter since 2010, according to the Independent Crime Survey for England and Wales. Overall, people in rural areas are two thirds as likely to be the victim of crime as those in urban areas.

“Reforming the police funding formula remains our ambition and we are carefully considering the options for how best to take this work forward. We will provide more information on our plans as soon as we are in a position to do so.”