Legislation requires that the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) agrees their budget and associated precept and basic council tax for the forthcoming year before 1st March each year. However, before doing so the PCC must notify the relevant Police and Crime Panel, by the 31st January, of the precept which they propose to issue for the following financial year.
The Police Settlement for 2022/23 has provided the PCC with an increase in Government Funding of £4.4m or 4.1%; including a Ring-fenced Grant for increases in Police Officers of £1,619k and the loss of a one-off increase to Local Council Tax Support Grant of £1,395k.
Taking into account all other projected changes in income, other than from a Precept increase, then the overall forecast increase in income is expected to be £5.7m.
This money needs to cover the following unavoidable increases in pay costs of £6.5m in 2022/23, which includes the funding to pay for 96 Police Officers as part of the Police Officer Uplift programme and also in excess of £1m of non-pay inflation. This takes the overall costs pressures to £7.5m versus £5.7m of income before precept is taken into account.
Each £1 increase in the precept in Cleveland provides almost £160k of additional precept income on a recurring basis – so nearly £1.6m per year of additional income would be generated if the precept was increased by the maximum amount allowed.
As such a precept increase of £10 is proposed. This will provide sufficient funding to deliver the increased levels of Police Officers, as required by the Government, the expected increase in Pay, the unavoidable increase in National Insurance contributions whilst also meeting some significant increases in non-pay inflation.
The organisational need for this increase, aligned with some significant support from the public for a £10 increase, at 71%, being the rationale for the proposal.
Decision 2022-7478: Police Precept Proposal 2022/23 (application, 202kB)
Cleveland Police and Crime Panel
Precept Report of Cleveland Police and Crime Panel – 2 February 2022 (application, 169kB)
Letter from Police and Crime Panel to PCC Steve Turner (application, 141kB)
PCC Response
Letter from PCC Steve Turner to Cleveland Police and Crime Panel (application, 234kB)