Legislation requires that the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) agrees the 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 PCC has been informed by the Home Office that: ‘We are proposing to double the precept flexibility for locally accountable PCCs.
“Last year, we provided an additional £12 precept flexibility. This year, we propose giving PCCs the freedom to ask for an additional £2 a month in 2019/20, to increase their Band D precept by £24 in 2019/20 without the need to call a local referendum.
“It is for locally accountable PCCs to take decisions on local precept and explain to their electorate how this additional investment will help deliver a better police service.’’
The results of consultation with the public of Cleveland had 1,066 responses. They were as follows:
- 68.3% said that they would be prepared to pay an extra £16.00- £24.00 per year, for Band A to D properties, as part of the Council Tax bill, to help maintain current Policing Services in Cleveland and to provide an additional £1.8m for investment in Community Policing;
- 31.7% said that they would prefer further cuts to Policing Services in Cleveland.
If the precept is increased by £24 then the Net Budget Requirement is expected to increase in 2019/20, by nearly £6m (or 4.7%)
However, after taking into account the additional costs of Police Pension increases, that haven’t been mitigated by additional grant, the overall funding position would be an increase of just under £4m (or 3.2%).
While this is better than the organisation was planning, it is worth noting that this increase will partly be absorbed by unavoidable additional costs to the organisation in 2019/20 primarily from forecast 2% pay awards and more general inflation (CPI is currently 2.1% and RPI 2.7%).
Decision drf-129912-1. Police precept for Cleveland in 2019-20. (application, 171kB)