Dorset's PCC wants more funding for policing tourist hot spots
David Sidwick says costs soar in the summer months
Improvements in the funding formula for Dorset Police will continue to be a priority for the county’s Police and Crime Commissioner.
David Sidwick says he will press anyone who will listen to upgrade payments to Dorset, one of the worst-funded forces in the country.
He said that while the national average for funding coming out of council tax collections was 25%, in Dorset local council taxpayers are funding 54% of the police budget.
He said the Chief Constable had already warned that she needed an additional £12million to provide the county with a good services, but instead was having to find £15million in savings.
Mr Sidwick said that the current national funding formula, which has been in place since 2013, took no account of Dorset’s summer influx of visitors, nor the rural nature of the county, both of which significantly added to costings.
He said that across the board many in Dorset were in favour of a better and fairer funding formula – including Unison and the local Police Federation.
Mr Sidwick said he had made the points to the Policing Minister two weeks ago and intended to follow up his call for fairer funding again with the county’s MPs.
Mr Sidwick said... the current national funding formula took no account of Dorset’s summer influx of visitors
“I suggested some of the well-funded metropolitan forces could send us some of their cash because we are policing their residents and, in effect, Dorset residents are subsidising their policing,” he said.
The Police and Crime Commissioner said he had asked Dorset Police to provide him some figures of the impact, in financial and in operational terms, of the impact of early summer of policing in Dorset, to underline his arguments for fairer funding.
“I will ask the Dorset MPs to support that collective endeavour with this data we can use… we will try and uncork this bottle and make a difference for the people of Dorset. As you can tell I am getting frustrated on their behalf.”
Police and Crime Panel chair Cllr Alastair Keddie said, for Dorset, the issue was at the bottom of all the difficulties in policing the county adequately.
“Across the authorities, the MPs, and even the unions we do need to shout loudly and have this, good well-structured, ask of the Home Secretary and the Policing Minster,” he said.
Mr Sidwick says he would envisage making the case to Government after the summer recess of Parliament.