Autumn Budget 2021: South Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner criticises “scatter gun” budget

Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced the Autumn budget yesterday (October 27), which provided an extra £540 million by 2024-25 to recruit the final 8,000 police officers to meet the promised 20,000 additional officers by 2023.

The budget also included almost £500 million over the next three years to address the courts backlog caused by COVID-19.

In South Yorkshire, £570 million was announced to fund transport improvements, and public sector workers including teachers, NHS staff and police officers will be in line for a pay rise when the pay freeze ends in April.

Dr Alan Billings, South Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner, said: “For South Yorkshire, this was a scatter gun budget, hitting a few problems, many in some of the former Labour parliamentary constituencies, and firing money at them. But much of this was not strategic spending.

“If deep-seated problems are to be put right, they do not need one-off sums, however large they might seem, but funding that is sustainable over many years.

“As far as policing goes, I welcome the commitment to fund the increase in officer numbers and hope that it can be maintained beyond the three years of the spending review period.

“If it isn’t, then in order to balance the books in future years numbers may have to be cut again – which will make the drive to restore the 20,000 officers cut nationally look questionable.

“I welcome the fact that police staff as well as police officers will be able to negotiate a fair pay settlement.

“But what is also clear is that the additional funding for police forces nationwide depends on all police and crime commissioners putting up the precept each year for the next three years by £10 on a Band D property.

“However, the financial circumstances of council tax payers in South Yorkshire are very different from those of residents in Surrey.

“I will take local opinion and local circumstances into consideration before I set the precept, balancing carefully the needs of the force and the ability of people locally to pay.

“I note that £3.8bn is set aside for new prison building. If this means that money will be found to lock up more people rather than prevent them getting into trouble in the first place, that is regrettable.

“And we need money to make existing prisons fit both for those serving time and also for the many men and women prison officers who spend their working lives there, many of whom live in South Yorkshire where we have four prisons.”