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Police chief warns force is facing £8.5m budget gap

BBC Head and shoulders shot of Rachel Swann - she is wearing her police uniform, has thick black-rimmed glasses and has a large fringe-type hairstyle. BBC
Derbyshire Police's chief constable, Rachel Swann, said the majority of the budget pressures were outside of the force's control

Derbyshire's most senior police officer has said the force has a budget gap of more than £8.5m due to "external pressure" they "cannot influence".

Chief constable Rachel Swann made the claims in a public letter which said funding for police had "reached a critical point".

She has called on the county's police and crime commissioner Nicolle Ndiweni-Roberts to raise the portion of council tax to fund the force by the maximum of £14 a year for a band D property.

Ms Swann said: "Uncertainty about both grant funding and council tax increases means that it is increasingly difficult to predict with confidence our level of resources and significantly hinders our ability for financial planning."

A police officer at road closure in Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire. There are three traffic cones, a police sign, a stationary police car and an officer on a narrow country lane.
The chief constable said the Home Office had made "no allowance" for 2025/2026 pay award leaving the force to find the shortfall

The chief constable said the force had originally predicted a budget gap of around £1.5m by the end of the current financial year, but the Autumn budget increased this to £5.5m.

She added the gap had then "been compounded" further by the Home Office grant settlement on 17 December, which had increased the amount the force needed to find to balance the books to more than £8.5m.

Ms Swann said while the extra £264m for policing is an increase in their grant, at least £300m was required to fund the extra cost of the September 2024 pay award.

Work on reviewing the current funding formula is underway, but Ms Swann added any progress towards a fairer system of funding the police has been "painstakingly slow".

'Further savings'

"The force has, under my leadership, continued to focus on increasing efficiencies and demonstrating good value for money," she said.

"We have successfully met our savings targets each year. We are, however, now at the point where the force must find further savings to meet external pressures alone, and this in turn is reducing the level of resources available to the force."

The police chief said The Home Office have made "no allowance for the 2025/2026 pay award" in its grant – despite the Government recommendation of a 2.8% pay increase to the Police Remuneration Review Body.

"This cost, therefore, falls to policing to find. Without an allowance for pay awards, inflation, Home Office IT increases and all other pressures external to Derbyshire, this clearly creates a substantial budget gap, in the region of £8.5m," she added.

Derbyshire's police & crime commissioner, Ndiweni-Roberts, has recommended increasing the portion of council tax which helps fund the force by the maximum stated by the chief constable.

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