Comprehensive Spending Review

The spending review is a Treasury-led process to allocate resources across all Government departments according to Government priorities.

This review covers the four years from 2011/12 to 2014/15 and today the Treasury highlighted its departmental allocations, this included funding for the areas of responsibility held by the Home Office.

Warwickshire Police is funded by a police grant from the Home Office, a formula grant from the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) and Council Tax. The Chancellor announced in the House of Commons as part of Comprehensive Spending Review that that police spending will be cut by 4% p.a. However, a Treasury document supporting the Comprehensive Spending Review states that “Central Government police funding will reduce by 20% in real terms by 2014-15.” This differing presentation of the numbers highlighting the need to examine the detail before conclusions can be drawn. At this time individual police forces, including Warwickshire Police, do not know how this will directly affect local settlements and it would be inappropriate to speculate about what this may or may not translate to in real financial terms at a local level. The detail for Warwickshire’s funding is not expected until early December.

The stark reality is that we, along with the rest of the public sector, are facing a very severe financial position over the short to medium term. We will have to deliver year-on-year real-term cuts and the service will have to contract accordingly. In addressing this problem the overarching philosophy will need to be the delivery of the maximum protection from harm that we can afford.

A blueprint for a new force better capable of delivering the maximum protection possible with the resources available will be presented to the Authority on November 17, in response to our current £13.4m reduction target. We will not speculate on cuts, workforce numbers or other matters relating to such proposals before this meeting.