Sadly, she doesn’t want our opinion on the vast sum of money wasted on her and her employees which appears to be somewhere between more £1 million and up to £3 m depending on where you look (Owl is not an accountant) – with, of course, more staff to help her.
Click to access STA_REP_statement-of-account-YE-31.03.17_170929.pdf
(pages 12, 24 and 26)
“The Police and Crime Commissioner Alison Hernandez invites you to take part in a survey about increasing the precept for police funding in your area. Please click on the attached link to take part.
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/G2S8QP7
Thank you.
Message Sent By
Natasha Radford (Police, Community Messaging Officer, Devon and Cornwall)”
East Devon Watch 
Here is my summary of the financial report:
PCC Performance
==============
Police numbers: March 2016: 4942; March 2017: 4848 – a reduction of 94 = c. -2%
P&CC numbers: March 2016: 27; March 2017: 35 – an increase of 8 or c. +30%
So whilst the police had to lower their headcount by 2%, the PCC increased her headcount by 30%. The diagram on page 102 might explain this – with 24 Boards, Groups and Committees, presumably each of which needs agendas, minutes, reports etc. generated, it is not surprising that the OPCC needs headcount increases to cover the bureaucracy. To be honest its amazing that the PCC ever had the time to be photographed with a hunky fireman.
But that is not the whole story.
Despite being £4.4m under budget, they still had to dip into reserves by £10.6m. So if they had recruited the officers that they promised us, they would have spent £15m more than they received which is 5.3% of budget. This is clearly unsustainable, and to balance the budget they will need to decrease their headcount by 258 staff. Police officers and PCSOs account for 67% of the total staff, so assuming that cuts are spread evenly that would mean 173 fewer front line officers.
The general reserve is c. £65m, so if they keep spending more than they receive at this rate, then they will have eaten through the reserves within the next 3.5 years. Then what?
But even that is not the whole story.
Page 7 suggests that the deficit for 16/17 wasn’t £15m, but was actually £790m because they had under estimated their pension liabilities. This seems to have been a recurring theme, because even that is a drop in the ocean when you look at page 78 which seems to suggest that the total pension fund deficit (and I am not an accountant either) is £3.344 BILLION pounds!!!!!
These are eye watering sums of money, and under the current PCC they are getting worse not better. But that doesn’t stop her increasing her own headcount by 30%.
But perhaps we could forgiver her if the performance of the Police was excellent – but even there she has failed. We learn on page 9 that, of the three primary performance indicators, D&CP is rated Good on only one and Requiring-Improvement on the other two.
Recorded crime was up by 10.6% during 16/17, so even that doesn’t look so great.
Yet, despite this appalling financial performance, we would apparently have to spend 20% more in order to reach the average police expenditure per person in the UK. Or in other words, leaving aside the pension deficits, we would need additional funding of £71m or 25% in order to reach the average funding without dipping into reserves. If we assume that no more funding will be given to us by central government, with the local precept (part of our council tax) currently standing at £101m, this would mean a 70% increase in local precept to bring our police force up to the average spending on police in the UK. I hope that we are all prepared for a big increase in what we pay for policing.
SUMMARY
Whilst the PCC might be telling us that everything is rosy despite the financial pressures, that is certainly not the impression I have gained from this report.
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