Chief Officers have expressed concern that the Government’s police grant settlement announced this week is not enough to meet increasing demands on police forces.

Dr Tim Brain (pictured), Chairman of the ACPO Finance Business Area and Chief Constable of Gloucestershire Constabulary, said the settlement appeared, at first glance, to ‘create some real difficulties.’

'We needed at least 3% to meet the National Pay Award last July, but, in fact, we needed another 3% on top of this to fully meet the demands of the Government’s agenda plus other cost pressures,' he said.

Dr Brain said some local police authorities faced difficult times ahead, despite the Government taking over paying most of the costs of police pensions.

'It will take some time to work out what exactly will be the affect for local police authorities across the country. It will be variable. But it will be tight for some.'

'The police service has a good record in delivering cost savings and efficiencies. We have been set by Government a national efficiency target of 3% in the current financial year, and we are well on track to achieve it.

'But finding further savings is becoming difficult. Some authorities may face some real difficulties next year. Many Police Authorities held down council tax increases last year, by using their reserves. They will be under pressure to hold down council tax rises again, but this year they will have far smaller reserves upon which to draw. The level of reserves left available may not be sufficient to cover the gap that is emerging.'

Dr Brain said the Government’s intention to keep average council tax rises to less than five per cent could lead to severe cutbacks in service.

'Unlike other branches of local government, we do not have the option of off setting grant by increasing fees and charges for specific services. Some Police Authorities are going to be faced with difficult choices, and for some cuts in service levels may be the only outcome.

The fact that the settlement covers the next two years up to 2007/8 was indicative that the Government has no intention of funding its restructuring programme.

'Unless the government pulls something out of the hat, any authority and force intending to restructure in 2007/8 will have to find the money locally. The cost of restructuring will be very significant indeed.

'The Home Office has indicated that it will expect authorities to borrow in order to deliver restructuring. That simply will mean there will be a call on local police authority budgets to fund the cost of restructuring for many years, possibly even decades, to come,' added Dr Brain.

Home Office minister Hazel Blears said police spending will have increased by 56 per cent from 2001 to 2008.
She added: 'Our proposals will ensure that all forces in England and Wales receive a fair share of resources in the coming two years, in a time of radical restructuring that will give the police the organisation they need to fact the challenges of the future.

'WHO GETS WHAT? – Home Secretary’s proposals for allocation of the police grant for England and Wales in 2006/7 and 2007/8

• Total provision for policing grants and centre spending for 2006/7 will be £10,570 million – an increase of 5 per cent, for 2007/8, it will be £11,047 million – an increase of 4.5 per cent.

• Funding for police authorities will increase by 3.2 per cent and 3.7 per cent for the financial years 2006/7 and 2007/8.

• Rural policing - £30 million

• Special Priority Payments - £69 million

• London and South East Allowances - £48 million

• Forensic Grant - £46 million

• Crime Fighting Fund - £227 million to support police officer recruitment.

• CSO’s - £88 million in 2006/7, £340 million in 2007/8 to support target of recruiting 24,000 CSOs.

• Basic Command Units Fund - £50 million

• Initial Police Learning and Development Programme (IPLDP) - £13 million transferred from Centrex’s budget in 2006/7, with remaining budget becoming available in the following financial year.

• Serious Organised Crime Agency – an initial budget of £400 million.

• National Policing Improvement Agency – no announcement. (It is due to come online April 1 2007)

Croydon Family Justice Centre First in Europe

Victims of domestic violence will be able to access services under one roof in Croydon following the opening of Europe's first Family Justice Centre.

The centre has been developed in partnership with the San Diego Family Justice Centre, the international model of excellence on domestic violence, as well as the New York Family Justice Centre.

Until now, the services designed to help victims have been scattered throughout the community.

Now victims of abuse and their families will have access to a wide range of community services including medical and legal services, police officers, probation officers, and social workers - all from a centralised location.

It is also expected to play a role in improving domestic violence convictions.

Ch Supt Mark Gore, Borough Commander for Croydon, said: 'Domestic violence is under reported. Victims are often extremely vulnerable and too traumatised to speak out. The new centre will make the reporting of incidents much easier for them and will also offer the appropriate support from the police and other agencies.'

Councillor Mark Watson, cabinet member for Equalities and Community Partnership, said the centre would end victims having to ‘traipse’ round the borough to various sources of support.

North Cumbria Improves Custody Facilities

Cumbria’s assistant chief constable says he is happy that North Cumbria is making progress after it was criticised by the HMIC for having inadequate custody facilities.

Assistant Chief Constable (Operations) Graham Sunderland made his comments following the latest HMIC review of the BCU which found it had made demonstrable improvements.

'I have seen the report and I am happy that performance in North Cumbria is heading in the right direction,' said ACC Sunderland.

In February 2005 inspectors raised concerns about performance. Although inspectors recognised the difficulties created by the storms of January 2005 and the inevitable impact on policing services, particular mention was made of the custody facility, which they said did not meet operational needs.

Their latest review carried out in October acknowledged a significant improvement and as there were no further problems arising from performance and they did not see the need for any further action by HMIC.

North Cumbria has established a number of policing units, in particular a proactive team. This has required taking officers from elsewhere in the area. The areas affected will be monitored to ensure they do not suffer any deterioration in policing services, the force said.

Durham Opens New £1m Riot Training Centre

Durham opened the doors of its new £1million riot training centre to the media last week.

The facility has been adapted by the force from a newly acquired former plastics factory at Meadowfield on the outskirts of the city.

It is not expected to be completed fully for another two years, but has already provided more than 2,000 training days for officers since it opened just over six months ago.

The range of facilities across the site, capable of recreating incidents ranging from minor pub disturbances and sporting events to full scale public disorder, can be matched only by the Metropolitan Police.

The current street layout of the site is marked out by large metal box bodies but, by incorporating a range of frontages, along with damaged street furniture handed on by local councils, the site will ultimately have a more familiar community face.

The centre also has a 140-seater gymnasium for violent offender training with a second already in the pipeline. A 'prison complex', which includes open and closed landings, has been completed and a site for a suite of four classrooms has been earmarked.

A recently completed additional feature is the very latest method-of-entry rig that prepares officers involved in drugs swoops and early morning raids to tackle any obstacle, including reinforced steel doors.

The rig, tailor-made by Washington-based Live Engineering, features 14 different types of doors that can be arranged in a series of configurations.

Petrol bombers on the site have already generated one problem – a shortage of milk bottles. Until now officers have relied on the generosity of Lanchester Dairy to provide a regular supply of rejected bottles. But, after smashing up to 100 a day, supply is struggling to meet demand.

New Reactive Policing Model Launched in Doncaster

Doncaster is set to see the biggest change in policing in over 25 years, according to the force.

South Yorkshire police will introduce what it calls a ‘new reactive policing model’ in January 2006 to meet public demands for a faster police response and greater visibility.

In addition to neighbourhood policing teams, from the New Year, the force will introduce three teams of response officers, led by a sergeant, whose sole purpose is to get to a scene quickly. Their paperwork burden will also be cut as the officers will hand over the cases in their entirety to a central enquiry team.

Supt Ged Gamble, in charge of Community Safety in Doncaster, said: 'Doncaster will now benefit from a revolutionary way of responding to and dealing with incidents as they occur - the biggest change to policing in Doncaster since 1974.'

The force says it means communities will have ‘threefold protection’ from January in the form of Safer Neighbourhood Teams, 24 hour Response teams and Enquiry teams.

UK Shows New Zealand Centralised Call System

Thames Valley police have traveled down under to advise their New Zealand counterparts how to centralise the way they handle calls.

At present in New Zealand, callers call their local station for assistance, a station which particularly in the rural locations could be unmanned at times resulting in a poor service to the caller.

Thames Valley Police began centralising its non-emergency call handling nearly two years ago and was given a ‘good’ rating in the recent HMI report for call handling.

Ch Supt Shaun Morley, Head of the Control Rooms and Enquiries Department, said: 'For us, setting up a centralised call handling service was an immense challenge and we had to overcome considerable teething problems. I am pleased to say that there have been massive improvements in our service.'

New Zealand Police Commissioner Rob Robinson said: 'The knowledge shared between the Forces will assist with our plans, we are keen to improve and Thames Valley Police’s results are a good sign of what we too can hope to achieve.'

Pictured left to right: Deputy Commissioner Steve Long, Commissioner Rob Robinson, Ch Supt Shaun Morley, David Parke

Boom in Extremist and Illegal Websites

Bombing, extremist and illegal websites have nearly doubled in one year, according to Internet Security Systems, who reported a 40 per cent increase in extremist and illegal content on the World Wide Web.

According to ISS, the number of Web sites making such content available has risen by 42.3% from 132,000 in November 2004 to over 188,000 in November 2005. This corresponds to over 16 million individual Internet pages.

In the ISS data processing centre located in Kassel in Germany, a thousand PCs are continuously crawling the Internet for new Web pages.

Images, graphics and texts of Internet offerings are constantly and automatically analysed and classified into one of 60 subject categories covering everything from normal Web use, such as home banking, online shopping, music, and sport, through to more dubious categories such as weapons, spyware distribution sites, extremist pages, etc.

The Internet content that ISS includes in its extremism and illegal activities categories are topics such as instructions on how to make weapons and bombs, hardcore pornography, satanism, occultism, suicide forums or pages about human cannibalism.

Sites encouraging suicide or self-mutilation, violence, torture, etc. are also included in these categories. Incitement to carry out illegal activities like murder or arson also attributed to this category.