The Government needs to fix the police funding formula as officers are leaving policing due to “violence, stress and unmanageable workloads”, the Chair of Cleveland Police Federation has said.

Paul Crowley was speaking after Tiff Lynch, Acting Chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW), wrote a column in The Times saying that the police exodus over low pay was a “public safety catastrophe”.

Tiff wrote: “We are on track to lose 10,000 officers a year. The proportion of officers with less than five years' experience has jumped by a third since 2019. We are haemorrhaging talent, as long-serving officers walk away because they simply can't afford to stay.”

Paul agreed, saying: “Quite simply, the funding formula is broken. For example, in the eyes of the Government, Cleveland is seen as a rural force because we’re sandwiched between other forces that don’t see the level of crime and violence that Cleveland has. Therefore, our slice of the funding pie is dramatically reduced, and as a result, we end up with fewer officers on the street, fewer officers that are able to protect our communities, and fosters an environment where criminality is allowed to thrive.

“We need to make sure that that stops now. The way that we do that is we increase funding, we increase the amount of officers on the street and to use those officers where they’re needed the most.

"To compound matters further, because we don’t have enough officers, the ones that are here have got unmanageable workloads, their work/life balance is absolutely decimated and that, coupled with the real-terms reduction in pay over the past few years, means that the system is fundamentally broken.”

Paul said he understood why officers were looking for opportunities outside policing: “Why would anyone want to put up with the violence, stress and unmanageable workloads?”

He continued: “We need to deal with this exodus at its root cause: the funding formula and police pay. The Government needs to sit up, recognise that, and take some responsibility for what they’re creating.”

Paul noted that the Government was increasing its spending on defence, the NHS and education, but was ignoring policing: “We’re always on the government’s back burner. That needs to be turned around. This system needs to be fixed and it needs to be fixed now.”