Police warn £1bn extra funding not enough to prevent cuts

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The government has raised funding for the police in England and Wales next year by £1bn, though senior officials have warned the increase will not be enough to prevent cuts to services and staff.

The Home Office will deliver a 3 per cent real terms increase in police funding to £19.5bn overall, the government said on Tuesday. A third of the rise will be covered by council tax increases that average £14 per household.

Police forces have been warning they would be required to cut officer numbers if the government did not significantly raise spending to plug projected budget shortfalls.

In Parliament, policing minister Dame Diana Johnson said the 2025-2026 settlement struck “the balance between protecting taxpayers and providing funding for police forces”.

She said the extra money would cover the costs of last month’s pledge to boost neighbourhood policing figures, as well as pay rises and a £230.3mn increase in employers’ national insurance contributions.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said that “at a time the public finances are under pressure”, the settlement was “a sign of how seriously we take getting neighbourhood police on to the beat”.

However, Essex police and crime commissioner Roger Hirst disputed Johnson’s figures, saying the additional funding next year was not enough to cover pay and inflationary pressures. “It leaves a gap of £218mn, which is equal to the costs of retaining more than 3,500 officers,” he said.

The increase announced on Tuesday will see London’s Metropolitan police gain £249mn in extra funding, although this is about £200mn short of what Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley forecast the budget shortfall could be next year.

The force, the UK’s largest with 46,000 officers, has made contingency plans to slash services and lay off up to 2,300 officers and 400 staff, after running down its emergency reserves financing day to day policing.

A Met police spokesperson said that while the government had provided additional funding for next year, “the gap remains significant and at this stage, we believe we will still need to make the majority of the tough choices we have planned for”.

Separately, the Home Office announced a £500mn increase in funding for UK intelligence services, and a £140mn rise in funding for counterterror police “in recognition of the increasingly complex national security environment”. 

New “youth diversion orders” would also be created to help divert young people away from terrorist ideologies, it announced. Security minister Dan Jarvis warned of “a serious and emerging trend of increased youth radicalisation across the country, with the proportion of MI5 investigations into under-18s surging threefold in the last three years”.