POLICE and Crime Commissioner for Warwickshire Philip Seccombe is inviting residents to share their views on how policing should be funded, following the Government’s publication of its provisional police funding settlement.
Mr Seccombe said the Government’s announcement included only basic headline figures and provided little detail about how individual grants would be allocated.
He added this made financial planning difficult, though the figures indicated a modest increase for Warwickshire. Under the Government’s approach, around two thirds of the overall budget increase is expected to come from local taxpayers, with the remainder provided through national funding.
This he said presupposed all PCCs would apply the maximum increase to the police element of Council Tax. This has been set at £15 for an average Band D household by the Government, with those in higher bands paying proportionately more and those in lower bands paying less.
Without this full increase, Mr Seccombe said the ability to deliver and sustain improvements to Warwickshire Police would be significantly reduced.
And he added not taking the maximum rise would also have a compounding effect in future years, reducing financial resilience and placing greater pressure on stretched budgets.
Mr Seccombe said the proposed budget would include aiming to improve response times, strengthen investigations and criminal justice outcomes, and maintain improvements in call handling and visible patrols.
Other improvements the budget will look to support include expanding incident response capacity and matching resources to demand, protecting neighbourhood policing teams and visible patrols, improving specialist investigations and replacing the crime and investigation management system, investing in training facilities, vehicles, modern equipment and essential digital tools, keeping buildings, equipment and IT reliable and secure and delivering more than £2million in efficiency savings to protect frontline policing.
Mr Seccombe said: “I recognise the pressures on household budgets and would always prefer to see a greater share of policing funded nationally. In the absence of this, I have little choice but to ask local taxpayers to contribute more so that the Chief Constable has the resources needed to keep Warwickshire safe.
“My role is to set a balanced and responsible budget and, while we await further detail from Government which could change the picture, it is likely that I will need to propose the maximum precept increase. I am keen to hear residents’ views before finalising these plans.”
The budget for 2026/27 will be presented to the Warwickshire Police and Crime Panel on February 2.
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