Home Office making police cuts without understanding, report says

The Home Office has been accused of making deep cuts in policing without understanding how it will affect the public in a highly critical official auditors’ report.

The National Audit Office has also concluded that civil servants as well as forces in England and Wales do not have a clear understanding of the demands placed on them or the factors that affect their costs.

The NAO’s findings come weeks after Theresa May, the home secretary, accused the Police Federation of crying wolf about the impact of austerity as she warned rank-and-file officers to brace themselves for fresh cuts.

Auditors set out to assess the forces’ financial sustainability. Their report concluded: “The [Home Office] has insufficient information to determine how much further it can reduce funding without degrading services or when it may need to support individual forces.”

They noted that the police watchdog HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) provides regular information on policing, checking and verifying data provided by forces through inspections.

The report added, however, that this was insufficient information to “identify signs of the sector being unable to deliver services, unclear links between financial reductions and service pressures, and limited data on police productivity.”

The Home Office should build on an ongoing review of funding formulas for police and adopt an approach “that takes account of forces’ local circumstances more fairly”, the report recommended.

Although statistics show crime falling since 2010, police forces were said to have an “insufficient understanding of the demand for services” and “will need to transform the service they deliver if they are to meet the financial challenge and address the changing nature of crime”.

Forces have successfully reduced costs but most “do not have a thorough evidence-based understanding of demand, or what affects their costs”, the report said.

“It is therefore difficult for them to transform services intelligently, show how much resource they need, and demonstrate that they are delivering value for money,” it added.

Auditors have examining official figures and found that funding for forces has been cut by £2.3bn, or 25%, between 2010-11 and 2015-16.

Overall, the amount handed to police and crime commissioners (PCCs), who set budgets in most of the 43 forces, fell by 18% in real terms over the period when local council tax receipts received by forces were included. The total available to individual forces fell by between 12% and 23%.

Separate figures show the number of officers fell by 16,659 between 2010 and 2014.

Financial reserves across all forces with comparable data have increased by 35% in real terms between 2010-11 and 2013-14, the report said, but stressed that “this is not necessarily a sign of financial health”.

Amyas Morse, the head of the NAO, said: “Without a thorough understanding of demand or the factors that bear on their costs it is difficult for them to transform services intelligently.

“The Home Office also needs to be better informed to discharge its responsibilities. It needs to work with HMIC, the College of Policing and forces to gain a clearer understanding of the health of the service, particularly around demand and on when forces may be at risk of failing to meet the needs of local communities.”

Steve White, the chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said the report showed that the Home Office did not have the evidence to claim that policing was coping adequately with the cuts of the last five years.

“Ministers point to falling crime rates as evidence the service is coping, however they are basing this argument on a false premise,” he said.

“Crime stats neither take account of all crime – some of which is on the rise – but nor do they take account of all the other vital work that officers do which doesn’t fall into bald crime statistics.”

In response to the report, Mike Penning, the policing minister, claimed police still had adequate resources. “There is no question that the police still have the resources to do their important work,” he said.

“Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary has made clear that the police are successfully meeting the challenge of balancing their books while protecting the frontline and delivering reductions in crime.

“The government has committed to a fundamental review of the police funding formula to ensure that allocations to local forces are fair and appropriate. We will consult police forces fully in due course.”