Stephen Mold / Helen King
Minutes:
Stephen Mold stated he wanted to start a conversation around the Police and Fire budgets and funding for next year and get the view of residents. Normally the funding from the Home Office is announced the week before Christmas with 45% coming from the tax payer and 55% from central Government. The amount from Government was lower than other areas, for example Bedfordshire received £35m more and Lincolnshire £4m less. Police and Fire were not immune to inflation and people needed pay rises to keep up with the cost of living. Stephen reminded people that only 18% of Council tax went towards police & fire. The average household annual bill was about £2k meaning £278 to police and £68 to fire. In the county there were 1,500 officers protecting hundreds of thousands of people.
The Government was looking at the funding formula to see if it was fair. Northants was one of the faster growing populations. Numbers of police officers had grown by about 400 over the last few years and the county had one of the largest reductions in burglary in the country. The fire service had been in a very tight financial position when it came from NCC with an aging fleet with the youngest fire engine being 15 years old and the useful life age was also 15 years. One of the pumps had actually exploded due to fatigue. Eight had now been replaced but more work to do and 12 more fire fighters had been recruited. Significant work had been undertaken to save money by sharing of services and buildings with £1.8m saved the previous year on IT alone. Also using telematics to show how well the vehicles were being driven.
Ryan asked whether the fire brigade unions needed to be considered when financial planning and how does that impact? Stephen responded that negotiations were done as a collective. The absolute maximum that could be afforded was 5% but that was cheaper than the potential cost of a strike, but there was nothing more that could be offered in terms of affordability. However, if things did go down the strike route, there could be savings as they did not get paid during a strike, it would carry a level of risk though.
Sally asked what would be prevented if the additional funding was not achieved. Stephen responded that there were always choices, but he remained committed to the number of police officers and neighbourhood offering, investing in youth workers, case workers and neighbourhood officers. However, they had not done a good job of recruiting PCSOs who were a valuable part of policing, currently being 20 under establishment. There was a need to save 1% of turnover to reinvest in services. Sharing of buildings, selling off unused buildings for example Kettering and Corby buildings had had various sales falling through and needed to be disposed of. There was nothing that particularly worried him at the moment but if the response was no to the increase there would be some things that could not happen.
Maddy stated that training of new recruits was a concern to her with only ½ day for domestic abuse and she would like to see more training given and did not think it was taken seriously enough. It was time to change the narrative from why did she wear that skirt, to why did he do that? Stephen said he did not recognise that but would be happy to speak discuss further outside the meeting. There were several initiatives such as Op Kayak looking for sexual predators in the night time economy, working with the college and boys attitudes to girls and the recent launch of the Flair app. He had heard all the terrible stories from the Met and wanted to know about Northants and how people found the service.