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22 January 2025
It is “crazy” that a £4 million shortfall in funding may mean Norfolk Police staff being cut and officers replacing them in control rooms, the Chair of Norfolk Police Federation has said.
This year, Norfolk Constabulary will receive £235 million from central Government, but the Chief Constable says this will not cover increasing costs like National Insurance, pensions and pay rises.
Speaking on BBC Radio Norfolk this morning, Federation Chair Andy Symonds said officers had been struggling with cuts, high demand and low morale since austerity began in 2010.
He warned that this new shortfall in funds would mean fewer frontline officers on the streets and that the pressure could “break” them, leading to officers leaving the force.
Andy also responded to news that the MP for North West Norfolk, James Wild, had written to the Home Secretary to express his concerns about budget pressures on Norfolk Constabulary.
Andy said he wished MPs had supported police forces when the Conservatives were in Government, as “they also cut the police quite significantly and Norfolk lost a lot of officers”.
Andy said: “Sadly, my members have been used to austerity since 2010…we’ve been in this game of cuts and reorganisation and restructures to save money because of austerity. So it’s same old.
“It’s frustrating that all our Norfolk MPs, no matter which party they come from, haven’t been singing that same tune all the way since 2010 when we started austerity.”
Regarding this year’s funding, because the Government stipulates that money must go towards police officers, not staff, “the Chief Constable is going to have to remove police staff”, Andy said.
He continued: “Police officers who would be answering calls and going out in communities, deterring crime and solving it, are now going to be going into staff roles.
“We have this crazy situation where we’re going to put more police officers in the control room to answer the demand, then of course when they want to deploy that resource and put that job out to police officers, there are fewer of my colleagues on response.
“We’re seeing the consequences of fewer and fewer police officers on response and then fewer going into detective roles because officers are getting fed up with working at 8,000 revs every day when they come onto shift.
“So we’re seeing more and more police officers leaving. We’ve got this awful situation whereby there’s more demand, more is expected of them, and officers are deciding to leave or it breaks them and they have to have time away from the workplace.”
Andy said officers were “pretty downbeat”, pointing out that last year over 5,000 officers nationally voluntarily resigned, a figure that’s almost doubled over four years. He added: “The scary thing is that 70% of those officers were in the first few years of their service. That shows you what they’re coming into.”
Andy pointed out that Norfolk officers were still providing a good service to the public, having cut crime by 11% over the past year and having one of the highest charging rates in England and Wales.
But he said that as fewer officers were set to be on the frontline in coming years, and demand was going up, the situation was “unsustainable”.
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