Every police force still needs to make spending cuts every year for the next four years, the home secretary, Theresa May, is to tell police chiefs.

She is to warn police forces on Tuesday that the chancellor’s unexpected decision last month to protect overall spending on the police does not amount to a reprieve from making further savings or “let them off the hook” of introducing further major reforms.

“We must redouble our efforts, force a more urgent pace, and deliver a more radical and more sustained period of police reform than we saw even in the last parliament,” May is to tell a police reform summit.

“Because with protected funding comes an even greater responsibility to spend every penny of taxpayers’ money wisely, and to drive better value at every step.”

The past five years have seen spending cuts of more than 18% with the loss of more than 17,000 police officers and a programme of changes including the introduction of police and crime commissioners.



Immediately after the autumn statement, the home secretary wrote to chief constables pointing out that the “protected police spending settlement” meant a 1.3% cut in Whitehall funding in real terms over four years. The difference is to be made by increasing the police precept on council tax bills by 2% and by £5 a household a year more in the 10 forces with the lowest precepts.

But she made it clear that the forces would have to make further savings to pay for centrally funded increases to link up the emergency services and drive closer collaboration between police forces in areas of specialist capabilities such as firearms, cybercrime and child sexual exploitation. This will include a 50% increase in the number of police armed-response vehicles and an increase in counter-terrorism response officers.

She outlined further reforms including workforce changes to ensure police officers focus only on “core policing tasks” with greater use of volunteers, more joint working between police and fire services, reducing police detention of mentally ill people and new powers for police and crime commissioners over fire brigade and police complaints.

In her speech, May is expected to confirm that some specialist units, in areas such as firearms, financial crime or cybercrime, will be transferred to regional units or to the National Crime Agency.



She will say the spending settlement will give the police an extra £900m in cash terms by 2019-20: “That is on top of the £1.9bn of savings you are already planning to make … and the £2.1bn you hold in reserves. It represents – quite simply – a massive investment in the future of policing in this country.

“But neither I, nor the public, will have any sympathy for those who complain about budget cuts – as some of you have continued to do in the past couple of weeks. Because as I said two weeks before the spending review, it is not in spite of the need to find savings that we have been able to reform policing, but because of them.

“And to those who think the spending review gives you breathing space to relax the reforms we started five years ago, you could not be more wrong.”

The home secretary is to set out next the grant allocations for each individual force for 2016-17: “But I can tell you now that – just as you had planned to do a month ago – every force will still need to make savings year on year.

“So this settlement is not a reprieve from reform. It does not let you off the hook or mean you can slow the pace of change. Nor does it insulate you from the need to look for further efficiencies.”









