Independent Panel needed to sort Home Office police funding "shambles"

• Report: Reform of the Police Funding Formula
• Report: Reform of the Police Funding Formula (PDF 604 KB)
• Inquiry: Reform of the Police Funding Formula
• Home Affairs Committee

In a report published on Friday 11 December 2015, the Commons Home Affairs Committee says during the pause in the Home Office's review of the police funding formula, an independent panel of accounting firms, financial experts and the College of Policing should be appointed to assist the Home Office in formulating revised proposals. The review process was paused after Home Office officials made serious errors in calculating the funding allocations for police force areas. These errors resulted in forces who had been advised they would be "winners" under the new funding allocation finding they are in fact facing cuts, and vice versa.

The Committee considers the error at the Home Office sufficiently serious to name the official involved, and calls upon the Permanent Secretary to update it, by Christmas, on the outcome of the review into this incident and what disciplinary action will be taken where serious errors are found to have been made. 

• The Committee says the Home Office needs to recognise full range of drivers on demand on police, including:
  • the increase in non-crime demand on police which arises from cuts to other public services
  • increasingly diverse communities across the country and specific local demands created by ports, airports and tourist areas
  • new and emerging crimes such as cyber-crime, child sexual exploitation and radicalisation
  • Counter-terrorism resources particularly important post-Paris but this is not just a Metropolitan Police issue – all forces contribute
• The Committee does not support the idea of private sector funding through sponsorship, or local communities "crowd funding" extra police officers for their areas, not least because of the disadvantage to poorer communities this would create
• The Home Office set, by its own admission, an "extremely challenging" implementation date for the new funding formula, and failed to set out the envisaged transitional arrangements to the new formula which could have reassured police forces.
• The Chancellor's clear and clinical announcement to the House about future police funding is in stark contrast to the way the Home Office has tried to reform the funding formula

Chair's comments

Chair of the Committee Rt Hon Keith Vaz MP said:

"The current police funding formula has become unfit for purpose, and this review was welcome. Instead of designing a process which truly engaged the Police and Police and Crime Commissioners, they were shut out, with the Home Office denying them access to data and giving them an impossibly short amount of time to submit evidence. Police forces found themselves on a rollercoaster, where at the stroke of a pen they saw their funding allocation plummet in some cases and rise meteorically in others, with nobody able to explain why. It would be charitable to call it a shambles.

Errors by senior officials in the Home Office and the process adopted were serious mistakes, which wasted time and resources and gravely damaged confidence in the Home Office in the eyes of their principal stakeholders, the Police themselves. Senior officials did not communicate with those who would be affected by the review, or seemingly with each other, and did not understand the significance of the errors which were made. The ease with which Devon and Cornwall exposed the error was almost farcical, in a modern day battle between David and Goliath.

The Chancellor's announcement to protect overall Police Funding in the Spending Review was welcome, which taken with the Minister's decision to suspend the review provides a real opportunity. An independent panel should be appointed to assist in formulating revised proposals. We hope the assistance and advice of external experts will deliver a fair and effective funding formula. For this to work, the Home Office needs to state clearly what they expect the Police to do, and what they are prepared to fund."

Further information

• About Parliament: Select committees
• Visiting Parliament: Watch committees

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