Police Federation response to comprehensive spending review
Please find below the Police Federation's response to this afternoon's comprehensive spending review.
Steve White, chair, Police Federation of England and Wales, said: ‘We welcome that sense has finally prevailed and that the chancellor has announced there will be no further cuts to police budgets over this Parliament.
'Communities around the country will be breathing a sigh of relief that things are not going to get drastically worse as had been threatened. However, we will need to look closely at the detail to see what it will actually mean for forces.
‘Clearly, the government has recognised the value that our members bring to the communities they serve. To have cut the police further at this time would have been utter madness. I have my doubts that this would have ever happened had we at the Police Federation not been the only police organisation prepared to consistently raise the dangers and threats.
‘This is clearly good news but it doesn’t mean that the problems we have been highlighting in recent years have miraculously vanished overnight. Officers are still hugely under pressure and many forces still have the final tranche of savings from the last set of cuts to find.
'It is therefore imperative the government urgently revisits the outdated and antiquated 43-force structure which hamstrings the ability of the service to properly modernise, and I will be raising this issue directly with the Home Secretary this afternoon.’
