Police faced with huge budget cuts

Lucy Thomson

04 February 2010

REDUNDANCIES are on the cards as Warwickshire Police faces the mammoth task of cutting its budget by £10.7 million.
The future of both frontline officers and back-up staff are at threat as police chiefs in the county look to make savings of some ten per cent of the entire force annual budget.
The cost-cutting follows government demands that police forces across the country cut £500 million off budgets.
But Warwickshire Police Authority yesterday (Wednesday) ruled out a possible merger with the Staffordshire and West Midlands forces - an idea muted by Justice Secretary Jack Straw – in a bid to make savings.
Warwickshire Chief Constable Keith Bristow had been in favour of a merger when it was first raised back in 2005. At the time Warwickshire was so keen when the Home Office originally announced a national reduction to the number of forces, it spent more than £270,000 investigating the proposals before they were axed due to the resistance of some chief constables across the country.
But Ch Con Bristow has now accepted it is not the way forward and is backing Warwickshire Police Authority which now faces the task of how to reduce costs while also providing the best possible protection for communities in the county.
Not all however are against a possible merger.
Simon Payne, Chair of the Warwickshire Police Federation, which represents the county's police officers, has called for a sensible debate around what was most important - the policing of the county or Warwickshire Police as an entity.
He said: "The obvious answer is that policing takes precedent and if that means we have to be a smaller force or merge with another force to ensure we maintain the current levels of protection, then that has got to happen.
"I would not support a reduction in service levels of any kind, but each force has a headquarters, a HR department, IT, a finance department and so on, which cost vast amounts of money to run, so a debate really does need to take place about the possibility of a merger."
He added he was concerned about the proposal to make officers redundant.
"Lets not beat around the bush - £10 million is a massive deficit and it is a tall order for the force to make police officer cuts and maintain the same levels of service.
"There are 2,000 personnel and only 1,000 of these posts are officers. It is my belief that the officers are the back bone of the force - do we really need so many people who are not warranted officers?"
Visit www.stratfordobserver.co.uk for an update on this story.

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