MORE than 700 posts could be axed from Cheshire’s police force, it has been revealed.
Police officers are among those threatened with redundancy, Cheshire Policing Authority (CPA) announced yesterday.
The force said it was preparing for the “worst case scenario” after being pushed to make savings of £36.6 million over the next four years, on top of the £6.7 million already saved this year.
In a bid to cut costs, CPA and Cheshire Constabulary have already placed a partial freeze on recruitment and are unlikely to replace retiring officers.
Despite working together to protect frontline services, the budget cuts have forced the authority to shave the numbers of police community support officers (PCSOs) in the new financial year.
The number currently stands at 237 and will be reduced by 22 to 215 posts in 2011-12.
The statistics, released yesterday by CPA, suggest budget cuts of £11 million will have to be made in 2011-12, £12.9 million in 2012-13 and a further £12.7 million in the remaining two financial years.
CPA chairman Margaret Ollerenshaw blamed the economic climate, reductions in the coalition government’s funding for policing and rising costs such as National Insurance, fuel, utilities and general inflation for the job losses.
She said: “Eighty-three per cent of the budget is spent on people – officers PCSOs and support staff – yet we have to save 20 per cent of our budget over four years.”
She warned that cuts to staff members were “unavoidable”.
Mrs Ollerenshaw added: “Our financial strategy is to make as many savings as we can without reducing staff levels, to work with partners to share overhead costs with others as much as possible, and to ensure that we maintain the aspects of policing that the public say are a priority.”
Details of the authority’s draft budget were published ahead of a finance committee meeting on February 1.
The figures show that in 2011-12 alone the constabulary will have £6.2 million slashed from their pay budget, £330,000 from overtime budgets and £3.6million from non-pay budgets.
It means police staff numbers – which have already been hit with both compulsory and voluntary redundancies – will be cut by 45 by the end of March, and a further 446 by March 2015.
The number of officers across Cheshire will also reduce from 2,060 to 1,847 over the next four years through natural turnover of staff, the authority said.
“The public has told us to protect neighbourhood policing, those roles that tackle criminal activity and roles that protect vulnerable people,” said Mrs Ollerenshaw. “This is our intention. The decisions that we will have to take over the next four years will be tough, but we believe that we can continue to deliver very good services in Cheshire – even with reduced funding – by transforming the way we police.”
l Delight over crime figures, page 7