‘Cuts have consequences’ says Fed chair

12 January 2024

Nottinghamshire Police Federation chair Simon Riley says cuts continue to have consequences after it was revealed thousands of officers are working in staff roles away from frontline crime fighting. 

Simon said the public wanted officers policing the streets and would be ‘alarmed' to hear that 6,000 officers in the UK are plugging gaps in staffing.

Now he’s urged the Government to properly fund all areas of policing - including staff and support roles - after years of cuts and underinvestment.

He said: “The Federation has warned for years that cuts have consequences and austerity is still having a huge impact on our ability to provide the police service the public demands.

“They want to see officers on the street and fighting crime, and will be alarmed to hear that as many as 6,000 officers are plugging gaps in staff and support roles, that have been also been decimated over the past 14 years or so.

“Staff play essential roles in an efficient and effective police force such as call management and forensics, IT and HR.

“Their roles, and those of police officers, should be resourced properly and it shouldn’t be down to officers to forgo their frontline roles to take up the slack.”

Simon’s comments came as Gavin Stephens, the chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said police faced a £3.2bn shortfall in funding and that it was still being damaged by austerity.

Mr Stephens said: “The reason that we haven’t fully recovered is because when you look at the underlying financial resilience, it’s difficult.

“[There’s been] a £1bn increase in borrowing, because we don’t get any capital grant to invest in our infrastructure, a £1bn reduction in reserves and £1.2bn still to make in savings. Those savings are predominantly going to come from police staff colleagues. So a £3.2bn cash deficit. That’s what would get us a stable service today.”

Mr Stephens said that policing was not ‘getting the full effect’ of the Government’s Uplift programme, to recruit 20,000 new officers.

He said: “Effectively, the pain of the budgetary pressures is felt by police staff. So hence the fact that we’ve got 4,000 staff vacancies and we’ve got 6,000 police officers that are in roles that should be done by police staff.”

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