Written statement on Provisional Police Grant Report (England and Wales) 2024-25 - Dec 14

Minister for Police and Fire (Chris Philp): My Rt Hon Friend the Home Secretary has today published the Provisional Police Grant Report (England and Wales) 2024-25. The Report sets out the Home Secretary’s determination for 2024-25 of the aggregate amounts of grants that he proposes to pay under section 46(2) of the Police Act 1996. A copy of the Report will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

Today, the Government has set out the provisional police funding settlement in Parliament for the forthcoming financial year. For 2024-25, overall funding for the policing system will rise by up to £842.9 million when compared to the restated 2023-24 police funding settlement, bringing the total settlement for 2024-25 up to £18.4 billion. Compared with 2019-20, this represents a total settlement increase of up to 30.7% in cash terms. For Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs), this means an increase of up to £922.2 million when compared to 2023-24 (if PCCs were to chose to take up the precept flexibility), taking total funding for PCCs to £16.4 billion. This funding settlement demonstrates that the Government remains committed to giving policing the resources they need to keep the public safe.

For 2024-25, this Government is providing forces with an increase in government grants of £624 million compared to the 2023-24 Police Funding Settlement. This includes an additional £185 million, totalling £515 million when including funding provided in-year this financial year, to meet the costs of the pay award. The Home Office was only able to deliver this substantial funding increase by reprioritising funding from other programmes. We recognise the critical work carried out by our police officers on a daily basis, and the recent pay award rightly reflects the vital work they do to keep us all safe.

This settlement also confirms the additional grant funding as agreed at SR21 of £150 million and provides an additional £259 million to mitigate the impact of increased pension contributions. Furthermore, a one-off top-up payment of £26.8 million will be provided to forces for implementation costs, reducing the financial pressures forces are facing to deliver these changes. This boost in funding reflects the continued, unwavering commitment from this Government to maintain the 20,000 additional officers recruited nationally, and ensure policing has the resources and capabilities to reduce crime and keep the public safe from harm.

For 2024-25, the council tax referendum threshold for PCCs in England will be £13 for a Band D property. This Government remains committed to ensuring the police are properly funded without placing an excessive burden on local taxpayers. When setting their budgets, PCCs should be mindful of the cost of living pressures that householders are facing.

In return for this significant investment, it is imperative that policing continues to deliver on driving forward improvements to productivity and identifying efficiencies where possible. The Government will continue to work with the sector to unlock the full range of opportunities and benefits of productivity and innovation to enable officers to have the tools to deliver on their core mission of keeping the public safe.

We, therefore, expect policing to approach the 2024-25 financial year with a focus on this Government’s key priorities:

• Maintaining 20,000 additional officers (148,433 officers in total nationally) through to March 2025.
• Continuing to deliver on the opportunities presented by new technology and innovation to deliver improvements in productivity and drive forward efficiencies, therefore maximising officer time and service to the public.
• Improving the visibility of police officers and focusing on providing a targeted approach to tackling crime and antisocial behaviour to make neighbourhoods safer, which should be a priority for all forces.

Police Uplift Programme

Since 2019, this Government has invested over £2.7 billion additional funding into government grants, to enable the recruitment of 20,000 additional officers. In March 2023, the Government, in partnership with policing, successfully delivered on its commitment - which is an extraordinary achievement. As a result, we now have more officers in England and Wales than the previous peak in 2010 – and the most officers on record. It is vital that this continues throughout 2024-25 so that communities can receive the benefits of this investment. We are, therefore, allocating £425 million to the maintenance of additional officers for 2024-25, to be distributed as follows:

• £67.2 million of the £425 million will be paid to the forces who volunteered to recruit additional officers agreed on 31 March 2023 as an ‘additional recruitment top up grant’ – providing financial certainty to those who chose to bolster officer numbers above targets.
• £357.8 million will be ringfenced funding, which will be allocated via funding formula shares. PCCs will be able to access this funding, as in previous years, by demonstrating that they have maintained their officer numbers.

Efficiency and productivity

As the Home Office has reprioritised budgets to make significant investments in policing, it is the responsibility of police forces, like all public services, to ensure that they make best use of that investment. This includes reducing inefficiencies and maximising productivity, and in doing so ensuring that the money provided to policing represents value for money. Police forces have exceeded the efficiency target that was set out at the start of this spending review period and this work should continue, for example through ongoing collaboration with BlueLight Commercial who estimate their work has supported the delivery of over £170 million worth of cashable and efficiency savings.

The recently published Policing Productivity Review has examined productivity in policing and developed a range of recommendations which, if fully implemented, could free up the equivalent of an estimated c.20,000 full time police officers over the next 5 years. The Government is keen to work with the sector to unlock the full range of opportunities and benefits outlined in the review. We will publish a formal response in 2024 once we have fully considered the recommendations and engaged across government and with key stakeholders in policing.

Investment in new technologies and innovation has the scope to unlock productivity at force level, support the policing of serious offenders, and allow forces to provide increased support to the communities they serve. In 2023-24, the Home Office accelerated delivery in areas including Automated Redaction for text and multimedia files, and we began to explore the scope of Robotic Process Automation to reduce the amount of time the police spend on tasks such as data cleansing, data entry and vetting checks. We have continued to invest in giving the public a choice in how they contact the police with increased digital contact, including the development of a public facing app. In 2024-25 we will maintain our investment via the NPCC Chief Scientific Advisor for a biddable funding pot, to identify and support local innovation within forces with productivity benefits. We will also provide £11 million to support productivity with increased investment in innovative technology. The funding arrangements for specific programmes will be confirmed in due course.

National Policing Priorities

This settlement provides £1 billion for national policing priorities (as set out at tables 1 and 4) to ensure local policing bodies and forces have the resources and tools they need to address the evolving challenges of policing in the 21^st Century.

The Home Office is delivering a range of Major Law Enforcement Programmes which will replace and improve essential national technology systems. This investment supports the modernisation of core national systems, enhancing the way forces communicate with each other and law enforcement partners to share data, intelligence, information and evidence. We are also improving the quality and the use of police data, providing national search capabilities, advanced analytics, and putting cutting edge technology in the hands of specialist officers to tackle high harm crime, such as child sexual abuse.

Digital capabilities can transform the way forces prevent and detect crime, safeguard the public and operate more efficiently. The Home Office remains focused on driving innovation and accelerating the delivery of priority capabilities into policing. This includes the development of a ‘digital front counter’ that uses technology and data to improve service to the public, reduce demand on policing and improving efficiencies.

In total in this Settlement and across wider budgets, the Home Office will directly invest in excess of £200 million in flagship crime programmes which are helping to keep our streets safe. This will support Violence Reduction Units to tackle violence in the worst affected areas of the country, it will enable the police to continue to stamp out the scourge of County Lines and it will help local areas to keep their neighbourhoods safe including through the continuation of Project ADDER. But this is also about maximising the impact of our funding. By targeting investment in hotspot policing in those areas which are disproportionately impacted by both serious violence and anti-social behaviour, we can drive down crime and deliver increased value for money. We are also continuing to invest in a number of other priority areas for crime reduction, including but not limited to Economic Crime, Modern Slavery and Violence against Women and Girls. Funding details for specific programmes will be confirmed to the usual timescales.

Counter Terrorism

The Government will continue to provide essential support for counter-terrorism (CT) policing, ensuring they have the resources they need to meet and deal with the threat of terrorism. CT police funding will continue to total at least £1 billion in 2024-25. This investment will support ongoing CT policing investigations to ensure the safety of our communities and includes funding for the CT Operations Centre. PCCs will be notified separately of force-level funding allocations for CT policing, which will not be made public for security reasons.

This settlement will support the police to fulfil their essential role in cutting crime and keeping people safe. I would like to express my continued gratitude and pay tribute to our dedicated police officers and staff for their exceptional dedication and unwavering bravery. I have set out in a separate document, attached, the tables illustrating how we propose to allocate the police funding settlement between the different funding streams and between local policing bodies for 2024-25. These documents are intended to be read together.