Greater Manchester’s Police and Crime Commissioner Tony Lloyd has called on the Home Office to “come clean” over cuts that could see tens of millions more taken from police budgets.
The force could be facing an extra reduction of between £53m and £75m under changes to the government’s Police Allocation Formula (PAF).
It would lose anywhere between 1,060 and 1,560 officers if cuts of this scale went ahead.
Greater Manchester Police’s current budget is £542m – made up of £106m from council tax, and £436m from the PAF.
The Home Office want to streamline the PAF to make funding more transparent, but Lloyd says a lack of detail over the changes is putting services at risk.
A consultation is underway until 15 September, but he and the Chief Constable, Sir Peter Fahy, have written to the Home Secretary to ask for “urgent clarification”.
Mr Lloyd said: “We’ve already had more than £175m slashed from our policing budget, which means we’ve lost more than 1,500 police officers. We know there are more cuts to come of at least £100m, but these new cuts are on top of all of this.
“By keeping the details of this change to the funding formula secret, you have to wonder what the Home Secretary has got to hide. It’s time for her and the government to come clean.
“As things stand, we simply can’t make plans for the future which creates additional uncertainty for the people of Greater Manchester.”
