North Yorkshire Police to receive a meagre £3.9m Government funding increase for next year

There is a considerable level of smoke and mirrors around policing funding, particularly when you look at overall policing numbers and the budgets available to a particular police force.

To be clear that isn’t a criticism of North Yorkshire Police, that is criticism of the North Yorkshire Police Fire and Crime Commissioner, Julia Mulligan and the Home Office for putting out headline grabbing PR that they know many won’t read through.

That headline figure from the Government is that policing will receive an extra £636million this year – that is of course dependent on the general public contributing more which really just another tax.

Each forces funding is made up of the funding from central government and further local tax called the precept.

For 2020/21 the government has said that North Yorkshire total funding was £166.1million

And they have said that could increase to £176.4m if the local precept contribution (public contribution) is the maximum – an increase of £8.4million.

They have changed the rules, and precept can now be increased by up to £15 per household (5.6% for a band D property) and that would raise £4.5million. For North Yorkshire that would take the total precept contribution from £81.1m in 2020/21 to £85.6 in 2021/21.

So working out the sums, that means only an additional £3.9million is coming from the government (£8.4m – £4.5m).

The Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, Julia Mulligan has declined to comment as they are consulting on this. Of course that doesn’t make sense as for a consultation to work well, there needs a level of understanding, needing the PFCC to engage.

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