Essex announces raft of money-saving changes

ESSEX Police has announced a raft of proposals to meet anticipated cuts over the next five years, including a reduction in the workforce and the creation of “community policing teams”.

It is expected that around £63 million will need to be cut from the annual budget of around £262 million by 2019/20. Currently, 83% of the budget is spent on the salaries of police officers, PCSOs and police staff.

The “clear and stark” financial challenges “inevitably mean that Essex Police’s workforce will become significantly smaller over the next few years”, the force has said.

The current property estate is also “haemorrhaging money”, said the force, with the 80 buildings requiring £30 million of maintenance and almost £2 million a year just to maintain the current standard.

The force plans to reduce the estate from 80 to 30 buildings and reduce the 25 front counters, based in police stations, to 10 – with locations determined by footfall and geography.

The current headquarters at Springfield will be sold off, with details of a new site due to be announced shortly. By April 2016, the public looks set to be able to report crimes online as well as by telephone.

As a result, contact customer administrator posts will be cut from 98 to 36, while the number of PCSO posts are expected to be cut from 250 to 60, with staff either retained, redeployed or made redundant.

With fewer police officers and PCSOs on the streets, work will need to be “increasingly intelligence-led”, says the force. “Patrolling will be targeted, for instance on emerging hotspot areas or at closing time in our busy town centres,” it says.

Ten “community policing teams” will be created in each District Policing Area to solve problems in crime hotspots, work with partners to address local issues, support vulnerable victims, manage the night-time economy and connect with the local communities. Over time, the teams will be located alongside local authority partners.

Meanwhile, response teams will deal with 999 emergency calls and crime, CID teams of detectives will investigate serious crimes and specialist teams will deal with domestic abuse.