DORSET’S Police and Crime Commissioner has hit out at budgetary pressures impacting on the county’s police force.

Martyn Underhill has put his name to a letter, along with four other PCCs from the South West, to Home Office minister Damian Green raising concerns over the ‘top slicing’ of their budgets.

They are also calling for greater flexibility to increase the police’s precept on the council tax by more than two per cent without triggering a referendum.

The move comes as consultation is underway relating to a proposal to close station desks in a number of communities across the county in a bid to save £500,000.

The proposal put forward would see the enquiry offices at the main custody sites in Weymouth and Bournemouth kept open while counter service provision at other sites would be replaced by surgery style sessions, possibly at venues shared with other agencies.

Mr Underhill showed the letter to Mr Green to members of the Dorset Police and Crime Panel at a meeting in Dorchester and told them that a number of recent financial pressures had added to the cuts to funding the force had received in recent years.

Now the force, which had been expecting a reduction in its budget of about 5.8 per cent, was now looking at a 7 per cent reduction.

Mr Underhill said that he was likely to have no choice but to go for an increase in the council tax precept next year due to the significant loss in funding.

The force could not keep ‘stripping to the bone’ and if the government cuts kept coming at the current rate it could be forced to consider options such as a merger with other forces.

He said: “Dorset Police is one of the smallest funded police forces in the county. It is also the lowest funded force in the country.

“If these cuts keep coming we will have to consider merger or a strategic alliance.”

DECISIONS NOT MADE YET

Deputy Chief Constable James Vaughan told the panel that no decisions had yet been made on the future of station desks and which would close, but insisted that the force needed to reconsider its current set up.
He said: “Unfortunately it is a service that is under used for what it costs to provide.
“In times of austerity we have to find new ways of doing our service.”