“This Government has made promises about neighborhood policing, but the reality is it's about to rip its heart out”

11 December 2024

“This Government has made promises about neighborhood policing, but the reality is it's about to rip its heart out,” the Chair of Essex Police Federation has said.

Laura Heggie was speaking after the Chief Constable of Essex Police, Ben-Julian Harrington, wrote to the Home Secretary about next year’s police funding settlement. It was not enough, he wrote, adding that it could mean cancelling modernisation and improvement programmes, reducing the number of Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) by half, and reducing the officer headcount. 

The funding announced by the Home Secretary would not even be enough to cover the current year’s 4.75% pay rise for police officers, the Chief Constable said, and could mean putting up council tax. What’s more, the upcoming cuts are at odds with the Prime Minister’s plans to recruit an additional 13,000 neighbourhood officers.

Essex Police Federation Chair Laura Heggie said: “Essex Police has invested time and money trying to address a void in policing numbers that the Government caused with austerity; fixing that doesn’t happen overnight. 

“To receive the news that the proposed funding settlement will mean further cuts to our finances, so much so that we would lose 200 officers in the next year, is disgraceful and on top of that we would lose half of our current PCSOs. 

“This Government has made promises about neighborhood policing, but the reality is it's about to rip its heart out. Our PCSOs do a fantastic, valuable job, and if they aren’t there who's going to do that work? It won’t be the officers, because they are already under-resourced and over-worked even before any losses. We will see sickness go up and retention go down.

“As a Federation we have said it before and sadly we find ourselves saying it again: cuts have consequences.  

“My members come to work to do the best they can to serve the public of Essex, so I ask the Government: please don’t prevent them from doing so. They will be severely hampered unless this settlement is reconsidered.”