Police funding - who's paying the Bill?

London’s population continues to grow by just over 100,000 every year. and the crime rate shows no sign of slowing.

The Met’s budget for 2017-18 is £3.269 billion. 70 per cent of that is provided by the Home Office - but no extra funding has been provided for the cost of the recent terrorist attacks.

The Met has made £600 million of savings over the past four years and is planning to make another £443 million of savings by 2020-21. The Met does not know yet where £185 million of these savings will come from.

The London Assembly Budget and Performance Committee publishes its report into police funding. Our key findings include:

• Most of the Met’s funding comes from central government.
• The Met has to find an extra £443 million of savings by 2020-21.
• The Met does not know where £185 million of these savings will come from.
• The Home Office still has not released the criteria it will use to calculate police general grant.
• The Met is expected to pay for the 2017 officer pay rise itself, an additional pressure of £10.7 million.
• Home Office Ministers appear to have ignored the advice of their own scrutiny panel and are underfunding the Met for the cost of policing an international capital city.
• Home Office rules effectively prevent the Met from accessing Police Special Grant for extraordinary events such as the London Bridge attack or Grenfell fire.

The Mayor should:

• petition the Home Office to change Police Special Grant criteria so that the Met can be reimbursed for extraordinary events such as the London Bridge terror attack or the Grenfell fire.
• highlight the Home Office’s lack of transparency surrounding the Funding Formula
• consider whether to raise council tax by the maximum he can without a referendum (1.99 per cent) to provide additional funding to the Met.
• reconsider his target to have 32,000 police officers, the numbers should be set by evidence based on the level of service required across London.
• set up an action plan to get digital savings back on track and consider using his Chief Digital Officer to oversee and provide challenge to the action plan.

The Met and MOPAC should:

• consider whether they can use a “retained police officer” scheme to improve workforce flexibility.

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